Clinging on to hope in where they pay people
Residents want to stay despite the plans
SEVEN tower blocks stand proud and tall over Rochdale. Minutes away from the town centre, the ‘Seven Sisters’ were a feat of engineering when completed in the 1960s.
However, campaigners and residents say the estate, officially known as College Bank, has been in a state of ‘managed decline’ since Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) took control of the council’s housing stock in 2012, despite RBH saying they are investing £20m on improvement works across the estate.
Six years ago plans were announced to demolish four of the blocks at Seven Sisters and this year residents were offered more than £7,000 from RBH to move.
Many have jumped at this opportunity, but some, having built their lives here, do not want to leave the four blocks facing the wrecking ball.
With no new lettings in any of the blocks while RBH look to rehouse people from the condemned ones, the exodus of neighbours has sucked the feeling of community from the once bustling estate, with dirty buildings and boarded up garages blotting the landscape.
Just 11 of the 120 flats in the Mitchell Hey block, the furthest away from the town centre, are currently occupied.
I sat near the Mitchell Hey block for nearly an hour looking to speak to one of the residents, in which time roughly half a dozen people passed.
Some were simply cutting through from further afield to get to the town centre, while others were from different blocks which have slightly more life to them.
“There’s no way I’m leaving, I’ve been here 27 years, I’m not going anywhere,” one resident from neighbouring Dunkirk Rise said on her way back from shopping.
Dunkirk Rise, like Mitchell Hey, Tentercroft and Town Mill blocks, has been earmarked for demolition.
“It is very quiet now, there’s not really the same sense of community that there used to be.
“I don’t want to see them go and I don’t think they will be able to remove them with the people still left,” the woman told us.
“They are definitely looking more run down now,” she said.
“The caretakers do a great job though in keeping it clean with litter and stuff, it’s tidy considering there’s only one bin between here and town.
“It would be good if they were taken back by the council and to get some more people back in so there’s more of a community again.”
RBH say demolishing the blocks is key to their plan to regenerate College Bank and nearby Lower Falinge over the next two decades.
But local campaigners have been fighting to save the blocks, arguing that homes they believe to be perfectly good will be lost.
They’ve been given new hope by a government decision earlier this year that gave the council permission to re-enter the market by opening a Housing Revenue Account (HRA) with no ‘legacy debt’.
Starting from scratch with a balanced bank account would open the door to the council owning and managing its own social housing stock again, a move backed by residents spoken to by the Observer.
Rochdale Council transferred its housing stock to RBH, which describes itself as a tenant and employee co-owned mutual housing society, back in 2012 - a time when many other Greater Manchester councils were handing responsibility to not-for-profits set up for the purpose.
However, relations between the council and RBH have become increasingly strained over recent years, with the housing organisation’s controversial proposals to knock down four of the Seven Sisters as part of a regeneration masterplan fiercely criticised by councillors across the political spectrum.
RBH has previously said it would be ‘willing to facilitate the council taking on responsibility’ for the Seven Sisters, if it came forward with ‘a realistic alternative plan to generate the £90m-plus needed to fund the works to all seven blocks at College Bank’ - something it’s hoped the re-opening of the HRA would allow.
Paul Walker has lived on the 8th floor of the Town Mill Brow block for 33 years, which RBH say is around 70pc empty.
He says there are two other flats occupied on his floor of six, but overall there are “less familiar faces around”.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me (demolition), these are good flats that they could be making money off.
“I’ve been here 33 years and I’m 79 now, I don’t want to be moving, my health isn’t good enough for it.
“I get letters through every few months offering if I’d like to move but I’m not going to.
“I’ve got my whole life here why would I want to be moving?
“It’s in a perfect location for me to get to the supermarkets, into town or any buses.
“It’s definitely quieter now.
“On my floor of six there’s two other flats filled so there’s still some people to say hello to but not as much of a community feel as there used to be.”
Stephen Byram has lived in the same building for the last five years but has decided to take up the offer of payment and to be moved to a new flat.
“Living conditions here aren’t the best, it’s been getting worse in the time I’ve been living here,” he says.
“It seems like they’ve stopped bothering since announcing knocking down, you hardly see the caretakers anymore.
“It’s difficult to know what’s going on. They did start boarding up doors of people that were moving out but they’ve now been taken off, but we don’t get told about anything.
“It’s not fair on the older people, they don’t want to be going. I think some people were offered as far away as Heywood and Middleton.
“People just don’t know what’s going on, do you stay and hope or go somewhere that might not be as good
“It’s pretty negative either way, some people have been waiting as long as two years to leave.
“It all looks very sad now.”
Some said that encouraging people to leave with cash brought some benefits to the area.
Paul, who’s lived in the Dunkirk Rise block for 25 years said: “Paying people to leave got rid of a lot of the bag heads, the kind of riff-raff that were causing some problems.
“It might be good for the council to take it back over as they can give flats to the right people who need it.
“The messaging has been very vague about it, I’ve got to know a lot of people around here and they don’t want to be leaving.
“A lot of people just went for the money straight away, it’s a better area now if anything.”
A Tentercroft resident of 18 years, a male pensioner said: “It used to be quite rough around the shop, kids outside kicking a ball around and drinking and stuff but it’s got very quiet in the last few years.