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Residents dig in to save Toxteh Street

Nicole Kenny
5/ 9/2008

TOXTETH Street residents attended an event on Friday to try and bring attention to their continuing struggle against demolition.

Plans which have been drawn up to rival the compulsory purchase order placed on around 550 homes in the Toxteth Street area in Openshaw went on display at the Strawberry Duck pub.

SAVE Britain's Heritage has joined forces with local residents to fight plans to demolish the homes under the government's controversial Pathfinder initiative.

The CPO has been placed on the terraced houses in order for developers to build new houses, much to the dismay of the local residents who fear their community will be torn apart.

Mike Mottram, 64, who has lived on the street for the last nine years is fully backing the alternative plans and hopes they will succeed.

He said: "The event went really well on Friday.

"I personally think the alternative plans are very very good.

"There is no animosity with Lovell or Manchester City Council, it's just unfortunate really.

"I've been taken around the new houses in Beswick and to me they look like chicken huts.

"There is no community and there won’t be because there is no pub, there is no community centre there is nothing to build a community with.

"They just want people to live there, commute to work and come back home and that's it.

"I personally would be happier staying where I am.

"Communities can take many years to build but it can be wiped out in an instant."

Mr Mottram said most of the community and people he knows have now moved away under increasing isolation and he hopes that this will change.

SAVE, an anti-demolition pressure group, have been working with architect Mark Hines to propose ways in which the existing buildings can be revitalised and adapted to provide a variety of new housing, instead of them being demolished.

The new plan highlights the flexibility of the existing Victorian houses by joining, extending and modifying individual units to create family homes of up to four bedrooms with their own gardens.

Marcus Binney, president of SAVE, said: "What we have here with Toxteth Street is a prime location, it has everything you could want, including a canal.

"This is blighting people's lives and I think it is the biggest scandal of our time.

"We got a top class engineer to come and check the houses and he has said they are structurally safe, so there is no reason to knock them down.

"It's a total misplaced use of the public's money.

"Our overall plan and aim is to show that demolishing is not the only option here."

On the day a petition was available to sign which will be handed to the council demanding refurbishment not demolition.

The fate of the area will be decided when the CPO goes to a public inquiry on 9 September.