Published 8 August 2013.
This is one of a pair of articles about the Ancoats/New Islington area of Manchester. They present contrasting faces. This article highlights how problems remain in fringe city centre areas such as Ancoats if, after expensive changes being made, maintenance and care of a project lapses. It highlights the need for proper legacy provision after completion, something, post-redevelopment, that has consistently failed across the country, not just in Manchester.
The other article focuses on how progress and movement in the redevelopment of the Ancoats/New Islington area appears to have resumed after the slump following 2008. It paints a positive picture of money beginning to move back into what potentially can be a fully functioning suburb of the city rather than one characterised by achievement interspersed with wasteland.
THE poster boys for inner city regeneration, Urban Splash, of Boxworks, Albert Mill, Moho, Timber Wharf, 3Towers and Burton Place-fame, in partnership with the City Council and the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), moved the first residents in to The New Islington development in Ancoats’ knackered old Cardroom Estate back in 2006.
“People are openly dealing drugs in the Marina, lots of drunk and abusive people about from the morning until night.”
Setting out to become Manchester’s ‘favourite neighbourhood, but better’, seven years on and much of the development still remains a half-demolished, half-developed former council estate with withered metal fencing loosely guarding empty and desolate plains.
One of New Islington's desolate spaces
A spokesperson for Urban Splash told us: "We are very pleased with our work at New Islington and what it has achieved.
"A mass of developments and improvements have come to fruition at the scheme in recent years; the 142 apartments at CHIPS are now fully occupied and a Nursery is set to open in the building's commercial space; the FabLabs unit in the building also continues to thrive.
"Housing developments at The Guts and Guest Street are complete, the clinic is open and of course the Park and Marina are in use; including the Park Keeper's Hut which is a fantastic asset for people mooring there with a range of amenities for boaters inside.
"More recently we have also seen Royal Mills launched, the Point and Isis developments move on site and construction work on the permanent New Islington Free School building has commenced with the school launching in temporary accommodation in just a few weeks' time.
"It is testament to what Urban Splash and our partners at the Homes and Communities Agency, Great Places Housing Group and Manchester City Council have achieved and we look forward to making announcements on new developments in due course."
On their website, Urban Splash state: ‘Our ambition was, and still is, to create the best place in Manchester.’
But residents of the £20m marina would beg to differ: “Urban Splash think the Marina where we are is their crowning glory, but for those of us living there it’s become awful”, says a resident who wished to remain unnamed, as did every resident we spoke to, for fears of repercussions.
“There are all sorts of problems with the marina, it was designed without consulting us boaters. It may look lovely but it makes no sense. It’s style over substance.”
Cotton Field Park
These comments came during an increased sense of despair down on the Ancoats’ marina where residents feel that they are being completely ignored by Urban Splash amid a deluge of security and anti-social behaviour issues.
These have become so bad that residents have upped boats and moved on to more serene moorings at Castlefield - one has navigated 20 miles to Northwich.
The more serene Castlefield
“People are openly dealing drugs in the marina and there are lots of drunk and abusive people about from the morning until night” continued the resident. “Gangs of lads refusing to leave the park even when the security guard comes down. There’s litter everywhere, windows are getting smashed in, people pissing everywhere, breaking into boats and even squatting.”
Unfortunately, these aren’t isolated incidents. Having spoken with a number of other residents around New Islington’s Marina, these stories were all too familiar.
“I know people that have been having a lot of problems, kids jumping all over the boats, knocking on the windows, throwing stones at the boats and putting through the windows," another resident told u.
“The worst I’ve heard is a gang of lads threatening to burn someone’s boat while they were in it. That’s worrying stuff.”
‘Worrying’ is putting it lightly. Although the security and police presence has been stepped up around the site, the problems don’t seem to be abating. It comes as no shock that the police simply don’t possess the man power to provide a consistent presence in the area, and the solitary warden is struggling to cope.
Inspector Alan Kelly based at Central Park Police Station said: "Officers from the Neighbourhood Policing Team have met and are working alongside residents, local developers, Urban Splash and those who use the area to help tackle anti-social behaviour.
"To tackle the reports of drug dealing, dedicated patrols are visible in the local area which has led to arrests and drugs being seized. This is part of an ongoing operation and is an example of how serious we are taking the concerns of the local community."
One of the barges with smashed windows
Most residents, however, don't feel like enough is being done, “They’re like feral children running around that place”, says a former resident of the marina who’s since moved on. “Back in the day you’d have just been able to give them a clip around the ear and they wouldn’t have been back. But if you did that now you’d end up in prison. I think it’s a generational thing but you’ve got to be looking at the parents. Where are they?”
The absence of that parental element almost turned fatal a few weeks ago when a six-year-old boy nearly drowned playing in the marina, despite the clear prohibition on swimming.
Luckily, a group of school friends also playing around the marina saw the young boy lying face down in the water and quickly pulled him to safety. A quick thinking bystander performed mouth-to-mouth and saved the boys life.
“His parents weren’t there and the person looking after him was drunk”, said a resident who’d witnessed the incident. “We’ve been warning the police that something bad will happen. There have been kids swimming in and jumping from high walls into very shallow water.
Kids have been jumping from the high walls
“The marina is designed to look like a beach and there are 'no swimming' signs everywhere but there's no one around in case anything happens. There’s young kids swimming and tearing around the marina on scooters, it’s like Butlins on crack.”
If the ‘feral children’ and anti-social issues weren’t enough to be worrying about, residents have also reported that mail and clothes have been going missing from the communal ‘Boaters Hut’.
This isn’t surprising, supposedly only accessible by residents who possess a British Waterways Key, when I was walking past the door to talk to residents I found it open with resident’s laundry ripe for the picking.
I was told by one resident that you could easily pick up a key for £1.50. Hardly Fort Knox.
The wide open Boaters Hut
“People with keys are just letting other people in,” a resident tells us, “There are unlicensed boats staying for weeks at a time and because anyone with a British Waterways key can get in, we’ve had people sleeping rough in that hut next to all of our post and clothes.
“The annoying thing is that if you’re paying, then you expect some security to go with it.”
An average canal boat in the marina costs between £100-£150 per month for a permanent mooring, with around £70 in Council Tax on top of that. Totalling an annual cost of around £2400 with electricity paid for by a card operated system, although, residents aren’t particularly pleased about this either.
“I’ve never been to a marina that has the plug socket facing the water before. I’m leaning over the water plugging my stuff in at night. Health and safety would have a field day with it. It’s so badly designed,” the former resident told us.
Signs are being ignored
We approached Urban Splash to see what they had to say about the current situation on the marina specifically.
A spokesperson said: "The Marina itself is a great asset for Manchester and we want more people to enjoy it and to use the space. It is a great recreational destination for the local communities and the majority of people use it as a playing area with their children, somewhere to walk their dogs, somewhere to exercise or somewhere to go fishing in.
"It's a space which is now full of boats and our waiting list for moorings is increasing, visitor boats from the Rochdale and Ashton Canal also regularly pass through and it's somewhere which is becoming more and more frequented.
"To aid the increase in use, we employ a fantastic Park Keeper who works full-time monitoring the area and looking after visitors, residents and people who moor their boats there.
"There have however been occasional reports of anti social behaviour; this is deeply regrettable. We deplore all anti social behaviour anywhere and are working with our partners and Greater Manchester Police on a series of initiatives to decrease and prevent this. If anybody has any information about anti social behaviour we of course urge them to report it to the police.
"We would encourage all of your readers to come and make use of a great new asset for the city and see for themselves the work that has been done in making this an exciting new place for Manchester."
Urban Splash developing away in the background
Despite the issues New Islington is clearly a good thing for the city. A great development for the north east area of central Manchester.
As principal developers, Urban Splash have taken what was a particularly poor area of the city and wiped its face clean, well actually wiped its face off... and then given it a clean.
They've injected the area with life, with people, with colour, with buildings, with jobs, with a new health centre and a soon-to-be-opened new school.
But there has been mismanagement here, in the case of the marina, in the controversial decline of Ancoats Dispensary, in the servicing of the CHIPs development. For all of the residents we spoke with, it wasn't so much the marina park itself, aesthetically they were pleased with it (although they felt, as boaters, they should have been consulted more in the design), it was the feeling that once the marina had been finished, they'd simply been abandoned.
It was as though Urban Splash had polished off the watery jewel in their New Islington crown and moved on to other projects, leaving residents to fend for themselves amongst the onslaught of 'feral children' and people pissing on their boats.
A peaceful Marina
Of course, there's a much wider question of integration here. Turning the delapidated in to the desirable. Creating new spaces to live and a new community for the deprived while also plonking in wealthier residents.
Yes, Urban Splash have created a good number of brand new social houses and breathed much needed life into the area. But less than a tenth of its new build homes are for social housing purposes.
Forcing shiny new things in amongst dirty old things. Outnumbering old Cardroom Estate residents who've been there for decades with new-comers inevitably leads to tensions.
In the case of blatant drug-dealing around the marina, it is naive to think that erecting new developments will erase the problem, scare away the dealers. Dealers will deal, whether it's in deprived back street alleys or on shiny new marinas especially if said marina is often unpoliced.
For residents of the marina the negatives are presently outweighing the positives. Their problems are not being tackled correctly and they're being left to pick up the pieces, quite literally in some cases.
Certainly communication between Urban Splash and the residents of the marina needs to improve. As one narrow-boater said: "I've been in that marina for a year and I've never seen or heard from anyone at Urban Splash. The only time they ever get in touch with me is by email newsletter... and even then they're just trying to sell me one of their flats."
