I wouldn’t like to have bought a house at The Way in Beswick – one of New East Manchester’s flagship new build housing estates….
From Inside Housing magazine:
Interesting, then to read a rather breathless press release put out by the Pathfinder body itself just shortly before my story ran….New East Manchester has, it turns out, been honoured with the title of Regeneration Agency of the Year.
I’m not quite sure what the long-suffering residents I’ve been talking to would make of that. It’s a particular effort to keep a straight face as I get to this bit:
“Satisfaction levels of residents have improved significantly over the last seven years – within the NDC area in 1999 only 46% of residents were satisfied or very satisfied with their neighbourhood. The equivalent rate in 2005 was 68%. For the whole of East Manchester in 2005 the satisfaction rate was 69%.”
Hmmm. So Jonathan Cross et al (in the feature above), these guys, these and this lot must be isolated cases. Let’s hope that’s the case. I don’t doubt there is some sterling work being done, but there is a lot of bitterness out there about the quality of what’s being thrown up and the effect on long-established communities.
AS A marginally interesting aside, Brendan Nevin, architect of the Pathfinder regeneration scheme and a visiting professor at Salford University’s housing and urban studies unit, has just produced an update to Transition to Transformation – the pathfinder chairs’ submission to the government’s 2007 comprehensive spending review.
But it was the original report that caught my eye. On page 29 (see below) there is a case study focusing on New East Manchester and – you guessed it – they used The Way, in Beswick, as their example. This was while all the problems were rumbling on for the new residents.
If that’s not irony enough, there is something else.
Click on the jpeg below and take a good look at the lady they featured. Then, look again at the group photo on page two of my Inside Housing story, above.
Can you see it….second from the right?
Yes, the authors managed to use one of my outraged residents in literature talking up the development. Innocent mistake, but amusing nonetheless.
