Farclose House, Springbank Road - Awaiting Demoliton 18/10/06

The City of Birmingham has a great time-honoured tradition of replacing substandard housing with soon-to-become substandard housing – see the results of  inner-City slum clearance around Aston, Newtown and Nechells for prime examples - and where once we had great swathes of the City cleansed of their private hovels to be replaced by the wonders of municipal housing, the reverse process is now at full force with Council housing stock being swept away to make way for largely ’social housing’ (Housing Associations in old money) and the buzzword of urban regeneration –  ’mixed use’ developments.

Farclose House seen above in October 2006 on the corner of Springbank Road and Cambridge Crescent awaiting ‘dynamite demolition’ was built in 1967 as part of the Woodview Estate in Edgbaston – a 13 floor high-rise, symbolic of not only 1960s Birmingham but of the inadequacies of housing construction and planning myopia in the late 1950s and 1960s.

The Woodview Estate has now largely been levelled as part of the sprawling Attwood Green redevelopment project that has encompassed the Lee Bank, Benmore and Woodview estates and – in the  main – levelled them.  The estates themselves were sprawling Council developments comprising mixed storey developments from high-rise tower blocks to maisonettes, houses and bungalows.

The estates grew-up in the 1960s hemmed in by the previously – and to some extent still – affluent residential Edgbaston, the industrial outcrop around Broad Street and the A38.  The realisation that they had, by the 1970s, deteriorated into high-crime ’slum’ areas finally led to the realisation that drastic action was required and the £100+ million Attwood Green project begun. The usual beneficiaries of Council estate redevelopment – Mercian Housing – are joined by Optima Community Association and Crest Nicholson in the project which aims to create over 900 homes and shops etc etc . . .

Whether the new estate will stand the tests of time – or deteriorate as quickly as the previous ones – remains to be seen!

Staple Lodge Road - Wychall Farm, Kings Norton 14/07/06

The Wychall Farm development seen above is phase II of a £40m regeneration project replacing 500 council properties – a mixture of high-rise blocks (demolished in phase I) and Smiths houses, as seen here. The houses, some of which have had to be repurchased by the Council as they had been bought by the residents, are to be replaced with 350 Housing Association homes developed by Bromford Corinthia.

Although most of the homes are now derelict and demolition is well underway, it is intersting to note, as we look around the estate, that some of the homes are still occupied.

Holloway near Caban Close - Ley Hill, Northfield 07/06/06

The Lay Hill Regeneration Scheme, begun in 2000, is another prime example of the gradual erosion of Council housing in favour of Housing Associations. Whilst, in the long-term, this saves the cost of repairs for the Council it also, in this case at any rate, removes 750 sub-standard constructed houses built by Wimpey in the 1950s in favour of 450 of what will hopefully be superior properties: that is the theory!

The ethos appears to be ‘building homes to last’ however, for anyone who has viewed the construction process, peg boarding and a plethora of wooden framing does not instill confidence as to their longevity: only time will tell. The usual suspects are involved in the housing schemes – Focus et al – and below is a selection of photographs of the site which depict what was there and what is being built.

Raven Hays Rd from Beeches Rd - Egghill, Northfield 07/06/06

Recently described as ‘resembling Beruit’, the Egghill Estate near Frankley Beeches, Northfield, was built during the 1950s/1960s and encompassed many types of poor quality housing from the tower blocks which once lined Lower Beeches Road, to the prefab, concrete housing elsewhere on the estate: demolition and a fresh start was the only economically viable option.

The project has lurched forwards in fits and starts for the past 10 years with no visible signs of it drawing to a conclusion. For the families left inhabiting the largely derelict estate, life became so bad due to the local ‘youth’ stalking the area and smashing everything in sight that the Council employed ex-SAS operatives to undertake covert surveillance in order to build cases for prosecution.

It all seems a far cry from my youth as I grew up in a tower block on Lower Beeches Road and have what is probably a rose-tinted view of the area.  However, the estate today appears to be somewhat in limbo – the majority of the council housing has gone, a sprinkling of housing association housing has been built but vast swathes of the area are just rubble strewn pasture with no visible sign of any ‘regeneration’ at all.

The estate is still a high-crime black spot and, for those residents in surrounding roads, an eyesore and a magnet to the less savoury element of the region’s youth and joyriders. Just what has stalled the process so considerably I don’t know – if you do, please let me know – but I have placed a few photos on this page which should give you a ‘flavour’ of the current state of play including the shot above of Raven Hays Road which is at the heart of the estate and used to play host to the Housing Department’s Repairs Depot – somewhat ironic!