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.