Dear Wembley Matters,
The government has just released its "English indices of deprivation 2025" https://deprivation.communities.gov.uk/ . The media has been full of this story, looking at the most deprived areas of the country, making for depressing reading. The site allows you to put in your full postcode and find where it fits in the national picture, narrowed down to areas with about 1,500 residents.
Its not a competition, no area should have to endure the multiple deprivation revealed, but I thought I'd look a bit closer to home. My part of South Kilburn is rated among the 20% most deprived areas of the country. This despite 20 years of regeneration which, we were told, would raise the standard of living in the area (the rest of South Kilburn has roughly similar results). One Councillor at the start of regeneration was always keen to tell us how bringing in people with higher salaries would raise the standard of living for everyone in the area (an understanding of basic arithmetic was never their strong point). Rather, it has made no difference. Hardly surprising, given the poor quality of the new housing, the general neglect of the area by the Council and the fact that they have introduced expensive housing into the area.
Given Brent Council now tells us that regeneration of South Kilburn will continue for another 30 years, your readers may understand the cynicism of residents who feel that whoever is benefiting, it's not them.
Pete Firmin, South Kilburn resident
5 comments:
Regarding the neglect of area part, unfortunately it’s the same across all of Brent, unless you report the issue to them via report.Brent.gov.uk aka FixMyStreet they will turn a blind eye to it. But point taken about Kilburn regeneration.
Hardly regeneration when all they have done is demolish crappy flats and houses and replace them with new crappy substandard housing, much smaller and more densely populated, unaffordable, less amenity space for existing residents.
Great post Pete.
Back in 2001 South Kilburn was awarded 50 million pounds from the New Deal for Communities (NDC) initiative set up by the Labour Government of that time.
We were judged to be the most deprived area in Brent ,just a little bit worst than St. Raphael's. Some of the funding was used to teach Latin to SK students in order to improve their chances of getting a well paid job but did it work
There has never been an evaluation of all the NDC projects, so we do not know the outcomes of any of them,including the students taught Latin.
Another project was to send young SK footballers to Brazil to learn the finer points of playing the game but nobody knows if any of them ended up as professionals back home, or even in Brazil?
Well at least we can see all the new buildings, as some of the NDC funding was used to start off the SK Regeneration Programme in 2005.
Most of the New Deal money in Brent was a waste of time. I speak from experience. It did benefit training organisations though.
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