Ghost town (From The Northern Echo)

Ghost town

2:16pm Wednesday 15th February 2012 in Leader By Chris Webber

A boarded-up, vandalised street earmarked for the bulldozer remains home to a small band of neighbours. Chris Webber meets those living in a street of ghosts.

BUCHANAN Street is a cliche. A cliche of every derelict, inner-city terraced street in every urban decay documentary you’ve ever seen. It’s all there: the boarded-up houses, the witless graffiti and the former homes now just fire-blackened shells.

Yet this solidly-built terraced street in Stockton, assigned by the council for demolition, is still home to those who hate it and those who, despite everything, love it.

Walking down the once-busy pavement, it’s easy to pick out three homes displaying signs of life among the 70-odd properties with sheets of metal where the windows once were.

Unsurprisingly, it was chosen by filmmakers last year to shoot scenes recreating scenes from the London Blitz of 1940 for The Other Child.

Each householder has a different story and a different opinion on the issues of councils flattening entire streets and using compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) in their quest for progress and regeneration.

They all know the background well enough.

Planners began the slow progress of demolishing the first of 263 terraced houses in Buchanan, Dean, Tarring and Worthing streets back in 2006 as part of a £5.5m plan.

That scheme ground to a halt when the Government cut funding, leaving some still living their lives on otherwise Marie Celeste-like streets. Now the situation may finally come to a head after Stockton Borough Council secured £1.52m to press on with the demolition.

Planning officers have already been advised by the council’s cabinet that they can apply for compulsory purchase orders to force-buy homes from stubborn owners if negotiations break down.

Yet, for tenant Katie Highfield, who is 24 and has three children aged six, four and one, the idea of a CPO provides a glint of hope.

She moved to Buchanan Street with her former partner four years ago, and recalls it as “a good street, full of life, neighbours as friends”.

But now she lives alone with her children – and an infestation of mice.

“My little boy was on the toilet when a mouse ran over his foot,” she says, “it scared the life out of him. They come from the abandoned homes and eat at the furniture, all my things.

This used to be a street you’d walk down and see a home, not a bombsite.

“One day, a man from the council explained that once a sale went through, I’d be given a council house and £4,700 to move. That sounds like heaven to me. I’m not an animal and my children are not animals.”

KATIE’S opinion contrasts with near neighbour, Philip Lodge. For Philip, a musician with a studio in his home, life with no neighbours is heaven.

“We can work on our music with no complaints and this is a nice home,” he says. “Our landlords spent a fortune on it, new radiators, fittings, the lot. The money to move sounds nice, but I’d end up with a smaller property, my rent going up by £100 and a load more hassle.”

His landlady, Rosie Young, said she considered the council’s offer to her tenant to move as a bribe.

She said she and her husband were told there were no plans to demolish the section of the street when they bought the house for more than £70,000 in 2007. They were even given planning permission to extend the kitchen some time later and have invested in £25,000 worth of improvements.

It all adds up to a lot more than the £55,000 to £65,000 or so the council is offering most home owners.

“We’re not going to sell until we’re offered something like we bought it for and then something for what we spent on it,” says Rosie, who is concerned at the prospect of a forced purchase.

Another perspective comes from the Cooper family. Not in when The Northern Echo called, their story has already been well-publicised.

Stephen Cooper, 52, has lived in the three-bedroomed home for 25 years and is due to pay off his mortgage this month. It is also home to his wife, Dawn, 49, sons David, 23, Aaron, ten, and daughter Sarah, 19, and granddaughter Lacey, four, who joins the family at weekends.

The family want to move and say they need £100,000 for a new home – but have only been offered £55,000 with a £25,000 bridging loan.

Stephen is angry that other owners were offered £67,000.

Now they live with no hot water. “What’s the point in paying £2,000 for a new boiler if I’m going to be moving out?” Stephen has said.

These neighbours are ordinary people having to deal with a situation not of their making.

The council, however, insists it is offering fair prices in the hope that CPOs will be unnecessary.

The bigger picture of a smaller, green neighbourhood surrounded by tiny parks, leafy pathways and new, modern homes and businesses is offered as a vision for the future.

Whatever the arguments for and against, the area and those who live there deserve a decent future as swiftly as possible.