A study of Britain's wealth by postcode published this week put Middlesbrough's Newport Road bottom of the natinal league for annual household earnings. So just how bad is the area? Sarah Foster pays a visit.

AT THE top of one side of Newport Road stands Cannon Park Industrial Estate - by day, a hub of activity, by night a hub of activity of a different kind. As one of the area's most notorious red-light districts, it attracts truckers from all over the country to pay for sex with heartbreakingly young girls.

It was here, on a bright September morning in 2000, that a passer-by made the grim discovery of the cold, lifeless body of prostitute Kellie Mallinson. In common with most of the other girls who shared her rundown beat, the blonde, diminutive, 20-year-old sold her body to feed her heroin habit. A photograph issued by the police to help trace her killer, taken shortly before her death, showed dull, lifeless eyes staring out of a puffy, drug-ravaged white face. Most poignantly, it showed curly hair tied in bunches, a portrait of a young prostitute not entirely ready to relinquish her childhood.

It is on another sunny day that I visit the area where Kellie's body was found, shoved behind an industrial unit and bearing the marks of asphyxiation. Shards of broken glass shimmer in the intense heat.

Venturing into one of the compounds, I am hit by the cloying smell of rotting fruit. There is a hotchpotch of vehicles - some gleaming new, others old and battered, and men congregate near warehouse entrances. I pick my way through the debris - including a pair of navy blue men's underpants - to speak to them.

A recent study of wealth by postcode area named Newport Road as Britain's poorest street, with households bringing in a combined annual income of £11,600. Nearby Wilson Street came joint second bottom of the league, with a combined annual income of £11,800.

At the opposite end of the scale, households in Purley, Surrey, were found to bring in an average of £53,900 a year. Warrington, in Cheshire, represented the middle ground, with an average annual income of £26,200 per household.

Salesman Kevin Scott, 30, who lives in Linthorpe, a relatively affluent part of Middlesbrough, is among the group of men working on the Cannon Park Industrial Estate. He expresses surprise at the study's findings. "I didn't think incomes would be that low, but they are council estates on Newport Road, so they are going to be low," he says. "We've got a lot of unemployment here, but then there's unemployment all over. The whole area is rundown. Going back a year or two, Middlesbrough Council wasn't putting anything in. The council has been to blame a lot in the past but, hopefully, Mallon is going to sort that out."

Directly opposite the industrial estate stand council and housing association homes, arranged in small, neat, cul-de-sacs, with no access from Newport Road. They are separated from the road by a high brick wall of the ubiquitous red hue, and their sense of isolation is reinforced by tiny windows that seem to discourage observation from either side. The doorway of each identical little house is enclosed by a brick porch, and some residents have taken the trouble to cultivate pretty gardens.

Parked outside one home is a shiny blue, V registration Micra - the same make and age as my own car. On outward appearances at least, there seems nothing out of the ordinary about this estate. It is clear that the area is not affluent, but neither does it look as bad as some estates in deprived parts of the region. There are no boarded-up windows or discarded syringes, and if anything, it is quieter and more peaceful than elsewhere. Sharon McLay, 37, is looking after her parents in Carey Close. She is a single mother and lives in Whinney Banks, another run-down part of Middlesbrough. She is raising her two children on about £4,160 a year, yet is surprised that the average household income for her parents' estate is as low as £11,600. "I wouldn't have expected it to be that low," she says.

"It's mostly retired people round here - there are a lot of old people. My parents are only on the social and they are pensioners. I don't think £11,600 is enough to live on."

Ms McLay says that, despite the outward appearances, the estate's residents suffer greatly from the problems of drug abuse and prostitution. "It's getting worse here for prostitutes," she says. "Girls turn to prostitution because there's a lack of money about. It's all you hear around here - drugs and that. Some people just can't be bothered to look for work, and it's just the easiest thing to turn to prostitution."

Ann and Victor Connor, who live in nearby Bowley Walk, have experienced the estate's problems at close quarters. About two months ago, they found a man lurking in their bedroom and presumed he was a drug addict stealing to fund his habit. With remarkable openness, Mrs Connor, 57, admits that her own daughter is on heroin and also a thief. She says the family knows she was formerly a prostitute and is uncertain whether she still is, but feels powerless to help her.

Mrs Connor, who is on income support, says with resignation: "I give my daughter money even though I know she will spend it on drugs." The Connors, neither of whom work, have a combined annual income of £6,500.

What is striking is the residents' unquestioning acceptance of their situation. While to an outsider, their stories seem shocking and disturbing, to them, they are just everyday life. Not even the younger people seem to aspire to, or think they deserve, a higher income and better standard of living. Lorraine Connor, 30, who brings up a family on £7,020 a year, says: "I find it a struggle to cope on the money we get but mainly, people do just put up with it. I think it's a way of life - people don't expect better."

Her sentiments are at odds with the upbeat views of a Middlesbrough Council spokesman. He says: "We are under no illusions that there are many areas of Middlesbrough that suffer from deprivation, but the council and partner agencies are working to bring in funding and investment to put these problems right.

"The areas mentioned in the study benefit from resources from New Deal for Communities and the Single Regeneration Budget, which are helping to renew neighbourhoods to attract the kind of investment we need to get jobs. We want people to take into account that there's a clear commitment to doing something in a practical way."

For the sake of people like Kellie Mallinson, it can only be hoped that this commitment is fulfilled.