Misery of living among Legoland drug dealers
Residents say ‘amazing’ flats of 1970s were left to ruin
THE estate has a lot of nicknames.
A stone’s throw from the Bury’s bustling town centre, it’s earned the labels Legoland and Plastic City, thanks to its prefabricated blocks
Sunken in a pit of land, secluded by the high walls that surround it, the neighbourhood is actually called Townside Fields.
It’s a fact known mainly to older residents, who remember the neighbourhood in the 1970s.
Back then, excited families moved in and hailed the development as ‘amazing,’ as it boasted slick bathrooms and ‘fridges in the kitchen’ an aspirational move out of mill town terraces and into modern life.
Decades on and the council estate is at the centre of a busy trade in hard drugs. Police have launched an operation against the dealers infesting the alleyways, seizing wraps of crack cocaine and heroin from hiding places, and wads of cash from suspects.
As a new estate, Townside Fields had two primary schools, a community centre, a park with a pond, a running track, a Polish club, a supermarket, shopping mall and market on its doorstep.
But in the years that passed, tucked out of sight of main roads and obscured by tree lines, the flats were left to ruin, say its residents. On a blustery spring afternoon, there’s an almost eerie silence, broken only by the creak of rusting swings. Litter rolls through the gutters and finds its way up onto the children’s trampolines. Resident David Norris stands in the courtyard, surveying the estate he’s called home for nearly two decades.
“A lot of people use drugs here,” he says matter-of-factly. “They’ve made it into an art form around here. The main alleyway is the picking up point, they even put a sofa there so people can sit and wait for the dealers to come by with the drugs rather than hang out in the shadows.
“I’ve lived here for 17 years, this is how it’s always been. “There is no real structure to life here. It’s a kitchen sink place if the council puts all these residents here, the council knows where they are. “They keep an eye on us, there’s cameras in the street lights, helicopters come over every once in a while.” Among David’s neighbours on the estate is a young HGV driver, who asked not to be named. He moved to the area five years ago. Standing in his doorway, he says: “It’s a strange mix here. On one side of the estate you’ve got older people who have lived here for 20, 30 years. Then you’ve got rows that are full of drug users that have been put here by the council.
“The drug use does cause issues, mainly fighting among the people that do it.
“My girlfriend’s mum also used to live here, but she moved because it was getting so bad.
“I understand that everyone needs somewhere to live but this place just isn’t nice, it looks like a s***hole.
“The council needs to make regular visits down here. The only time they come is when they’re having an election.
“The place is kind of on its own down here, no one ever really needs to come here unless they live on the estate.”
Officers from Greater Manchester Police’s Bury neighbourhood team say they are trying their best to crack down on drug dealing.
The latest effort is Operation Pevek - which promises to use local intelligence and carefully deployed resources to stop the influence of organised crime in the borough’s most vulnerable neighbourhoods.
“We’ve been using PCSOs to go out in our mobile police station. It acts as a base for officers to work from in places identified as particularly problematic,” Bury town centre Sergeant Martyn Bannister said.
“We used this to really good effect earlier on this year in the area locally known as Legoland,” Sgt Bannister added. “There are issues around criminality there, the community
was saying to us, ‘look, there’s issues here, people are doing drugs in the streets.’
“We sent out our mobile police station out. I got every officer I had at my disposal to set up in that area for two weeks.
“The idea was to patrol from that station and keep walking that area.
“At the start of that operation, on day one, the station had bottles thrown at it. By day 14, we had drug users coming up to us and telling us that we’d ruined Legoland for them because they could no longer buy drugs.”
Speaking about one successful drugs bust, the sergeant says: “The intelligence picture was that drugs were being distributed by teenage lads on Legoland.
“We were going on to the estate every day and speaking to lads that fitted the profile. If the lads didn’t have any good reason for being on the estate - it’s quite isolated, not really a place you would just be passing through - and were arousing suspicion, we would use powers under the Misuse of Drugs Act to
search them. As well as searching the lads, we would search public areas for hiding holes.
“But the group of teenage lads have not been seen back on Legoland since we blitzed it. That’s not to say a new, more discreet group have not moved in.”
In spite of action taken by the force, neighbours all over Townside Fields say they don’t hold much hope of a permanent improvement.
“I’ve lived here for 10 years and there’s quite a bit of drug use here,” Ali Ajdari, 78, says, looking out from his flat at the heart of the estate.
“The users make a mess and fight in between all the flats. I’ve reported it to the council plenty of times but nothing has happened. My neighbour and I joke that reporting it will do nothing.”
Nearby, on the outskirts of the prefab blocks, Chris Calder, 63, sings the same tune.
“I’ve lived here for 15 years. Police patrol down here quite often but I don’t think it helps,” he says.
Bury Council did not respond to requests for comment.
We had drug users telling us we’d ruined Legoland for them as they could no longer buy drugs
Police Sgt Martyn Bannister