VANDALS forced disabled Gerard Hardman out of St Hilda's, Middlesbrough.

It was bad enough when youngsters played on the roof of his bungalow. The last straw came when two cars were dumped and torched outside his front door.

The neighbourhood is as littered with shattered dreams, as it is pockmarked with boarded up buildings and the wrecks of looted houses, their windows smashed and gardens choked with debris.

Housing Association Bradford and Northern reluctantly gave up on St Hilda's and last year pulled down a smart, leafy enclave of 46 houses, built only ten years earlier. The reason was no one wanted to live there.

The closure of the neighbourhood's only school was another disincentive for people wanting to stay in the area. The old folk's home went the same way. More recently bulldozers cleared the last traces of the old Roman Catholic Cathedral, which was set on fire by arsonists.

The community of St Hilda's forms only a part of the district council ward of the same name named in the Indices of Deprivation 2000, a Government index, as in the top ten of the most deprived areas of the country.

"There are still a lot of good people living here," said Dickie McLinn, landlord of The Fleece public house. Five of them were sitting with Mr Hardman in the bar.

It is not unusual for there to be less than £25 in bar takings after the end of a long day.

St Hilda's is not so much a neighbourhood as an urban wasteland - even boycotted by some of the firm's taxi firms after dark.

"No one will come and live here,'' said a house-proud resident surrounded on all sides by a sea of destruction, too frightened to give her name and regretting she bought her house about 15 years ago. "I just wish I could pick up my little house and move, but I can't.''

It came as no surprise to her and others to find that St Hilda's high up the league table Britain's worst deprived areas.

People in Middlesbrough's Thorntree and Pallister Park wards find themselves higher up the list than St Hilda's, though they complain that no money is spent on the estates and that youngsters on the streets are high on drugs.

An upbeat Coun Ken Walker, leader of Middlesbrough council, said: "There is no quick fix. We know we are in for a long haul. But the council is determined to create a better quality of life for local people.''

Substantial inroads were already being made to tackle deep-seated problems, with the help of a range of Government initiatives, he insisted.