Addressing local concerns

Once the demolition plans were agreed, there was no going back, as far as the council was concerned. As neighbourhood housing manager Peter Beck put it: ‘We had a vision of the estate being radically different to what it was then. The only way we could see of doing that was to go forward with the plans.’

That was the bottom line, but everything else could be negotiated. Local councillor Jean Calvert asked that every resident could have an ‘individual care package’. Whatever they wanted in terms of making the move easier should, as far as possible, be done.

Despite the huge opposition to the plans, in the end not one tenant was served with an eviction notice. In fact, Mr Beck remembers writing just one warning letter – something that he puts down to letting every individual have their say and then responding.

‘We moved people to Wales, to Barnsley and to Bridlington,’ he said. ‘We even had one person saying he didn’t want to move because he didn’t want grass in his front garden, so I flagged it for him.’

A key character in the success of this scheme was caretaker Mick Lockwood. So impressed were the tenants with his willingness to help them that they gave him a special ‘thank you’ present of £100 in gift vouchers.

A report in the Huddersfield Examiner in August 2003 sung Mr Lockwood’s praises. ‘He helps tenants on the day they move out of their old homes and into their new ones,’ wrote reporter Jane Yelland. ‘He takes off internal doors if they belong to the tenants, digs up plants they want to take with them and makes sure plumbers, electricians and joiners are there when needed.’

The idea for the gift had come from a group of elderly people who had had to move as a result of the plans. Mostly in their 90s, they had been rehoused in purpose-built bungalows and were overwhelmed by Mr Lockwood’s exceptional helpfulness.

Looking back at the days of demolition, Cllr Calvert believes this kind of responsiveness was what ensured the scheme’s success. ‘We have worked with tenants rather than at them and I think that’s been the beauty of it all,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t about dumping people - it was about giving people what they wanted as much as possible.’

Read the Huddersfield Examiner report here

Some of the new bungalows built for elderly Brackenhall residents

A campaign of opposition

Demolition underway

Once tenants began to realise the scale of the proposed demolition, they were quick to react. They formed a group called Brackenhall Community Action Group and carried out their own survey of residents. This, they claimed, showed that the majority of people who would lose their homes in phase one of the demolition plans actually wanted to stay there. 

The group called a public meeting and more than 200 people squeezed into Brackenhall Community Centre, where representatives of Southdale Homes and Kirklees Council were repeatedly booed and heckled.

When the plans came up for approval at Kirklees council, more than 100 protestors marched to the town hall and packed into the council meeting room.

Action group members handed a petition to the housing chair, Graham Simpson, calling for the demolition to be scrapped, but the plans were approved unanimously.

Much of the opposition to the plans focused on the fact that some of the most popular homes were due to be demolished, rather than just the vacant houses. However, Southdale Homes said this approach was necessary in order to build houses that would be attractive to private buyers. 

Peter Beck, the council's neighbourhood housing regeneration manager, has vivid memories of the opposition. ‘They actually used to hang effigies of me from lampposts,’ he said.

The bulldozers moved onto the estate in October 2002, after months of delays. They were met by angry residents waving placards. The anger was fuelled by the number of times some tenants had had to move while waiting for permanent rehousing. Others were furious at the poor condition of their temporary housing, and there was particular concern for elderly residents, some of whom had lived on the estate for decades.

‘It wasn’t what they were doing but the way they were doing it,’ said Margaret Lees, who led the action group. Mrs Lees claims the council was not clear about the number of homes they were planning to demolish. She had thought it was only the empty homes that would come down, not ones that people were still living in. ‘We didn’t want to lose our homes just so they could build posh houses,’ she said.

In total, 600 houses came down. Peter Beck is adamant that this large-scale demolition was the only way to enable DBI to achieve what it did. Without the deal with Southdale Homes, there would have been no money for the improvements the estate desperately needed.

‘I can still walk round Brackenhall and no-one gobs me because we were determined to get the best results for the local people,’ he says. ‘ I can hold my head up high because I know we’ve done a bloody good job here.’

Despite the strength of feeling on the estate, in the end not one person had to be evicted. This may have been due to the very careful attention that was given to each individual tenant.

A drastic proposal

Bleak outlook: the estate before demolition

With the action plan in place, DBI faced its biggest challenge: how to redevelop the area’s housing stock. Meeting the challenge would lead to a massive and controversial programme of demolition.

The Brackenhall estate had a huge over-supply of two-bedroom houses which were even more difficult to let than the rest. In addition, the council wanted to create a greater mix of tenures, with more homes for private ownership. At the end of the 1990s, only 17 homes had been bought by their tenants, a figure well below the national average.

In 1999, a development brief was produced and potential development partners were invited to submit proposals for a partnership arrangement to ‘remodel areas of void housing, develop land sites, carry out environmental improvements and provide some of the community facilities’.

Eventually, Kirklees council struck a deal with developer Southdale Homes, whereby much of the Brackenhall estate would be demolished and the land used to build new private housing. The land would be transferred to Southdale and as homes were sold, a portion of the profits would be kept to reinvest in the local area - a ‘community dividend’ that would eventually be worth £8m.

Once again local people were asked for their views. In October 2000, Kirklees Housing Services carried out a house to house survey of the Brackenhall estate. They interviewed 393 residents out of a possible 500, asking them how they felt about the possible demolition of some of the houses.

The result was overwhelmingly in favour of some level of demolition. Only 7 per cent thought things should stay as they were, while 48 per cent thought at least half the estate should be knocked down.

Southdale Homes, on the other hand, wanted something more radical. Their original proposal was to demolish the entire estate, replacing it with a mix of private homes and commercial premises. The eventual agreement, signed in December 2001, was to demolish 600 homes, beginning with those nearest the upmarket area of Fixby on the other side of Bradford Road. The idea, Southdale said, was to ‘borrow value’ from more affluent areas to attract private buyers.

But even at this stage it was clear that a substantial number of local residents wanted to stay put. So Southdale dropped its plans for commercial premises, leaving an enclave of 180 council homes in the new development.

This wasn’t enough for the scheme’s opponents. ‘People said we should knock some houses down but they didn’t like it when it was their house,’ recalls Peter Beck, neighbourhood housing regeneration manager.