Ten years ago the Beaumont Leys estate in Leicester might have seemed a lost cause, but the city council and its partners refused to give up. The result of that determination has seen an estate people yearned to leave become a place where people want to live

It’s easy to understand why people wanted to leave the Beaumont Leys estate in Leicester, but as is always the case in such an exodus, it fostered a vicious cycle of flight and deprivation that deepened the mire and leeched the communal lifeblood out of the neighbourhood.

Rather than surrender in the face of the multiple problems of deprivation, and abandon the estate to its dismal fate, the city council and its partners embarked on a long process of stabilisation and restoration, to turn a sink estate back into a living, breathing community.

Ten years on, though plenty of work remains to be done, the transformation of Beaumont Leys stands as a remarkable testament to their achievements and all the hard work and commitment invested in the place, as well as the SRB money invested in regeneration schemes designed to turn its fortunes around.

As it was then, the estate consisted of some 1,800 properties, with 400 of these standing empty. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it was suffering around 20 properties a week being abandoned by tenants. The proportion of settled residents towards a more transitory population effectively passing through had tilted towards the latter, as high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour took its toll. Burnt out cars provided a grim symbol of the misery that had claimed the estate - and which led to people just wanting to get out.

This is now, and Beaumont Leys’ appearance has been transformed, as has its reputation; people are no longer abandoning the properties, rather the council has waiting lists of people looking to live in the area, such is its reversal of fortune.

“There’s still a way to go in terms of worklessness for instance, but Beaumont Leys has really changed,” said neighbourhood housing manager Marie Murray. “It has improved, in the appearance of the estate, the quality of the housing, and of the services for residents. We are encouraging much greater tenant involvement, so we are actually focusing on the customer and what they want, and that should really increase customer satisfaction. If people are asking for things and we are actually delivering - that’s our main aim really.”

One of the major developments in the estate’s transformation was to demolish some of the abandoned and hard to let properties. These are now being replaced with newbuild properties to create 130 new homes. These will include family-sized housing, and they will also seek to rebalance the tenure mix of the estate to help boost the sustainability of the community. To that end, and to break the mono-tenure of council rented properties, homes for sale will be among the mix.

Millions of pounds worth of funding from the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) has played a part in regenerating the estate, providing among other things, healthy living centres for the residents. One of the major SRB projects was an initiative called ‘Safer Routes’. “It’s one of the more traditional outer estates, built in the 1970s, so they are fairly modern properties but there were inherent difficulties with the design. Safer Routes was about closing off ‘rat runs’ and so on,” Murray added.

Improving the estate and turning it around demanded that the council not only work co-operatively and closely with key partner agencies, it also meant building up that relationship with the community - really involving them in the future of their neighbourhood - to boost cohesion as well as address people’s wants and needs for the area.

The council has engaged in a wide range of measures to establish a closer and positive working relationship with tenants and residents over the years. As well as the more formal measures, such as survey forms, and public meetings, it works with tenants and residents associations, and also has its officers conduct ‘patch walks’. These provide a chance for residents on a street-by-street basis to discuss issues with staff on a relatively informal basis, as well as allow housing officers to keep themselves grounded in the community.

One recent initiative called ‘Be Informed’ provided a beneficial face-to-face consultation with tenants, to really get to the heart of the issues. Though it’s a labour-intensive approach the rewards are considered worthwhile. “I’m a great believer in the face-to-face consultation - it works so well,” said Murray. “We were going door-to-door with our partner agencies, to provide advice and information on the doorstep, but also to consult with the tenants - basically to ask them what they would do to improve the estate.”

The two major themes that emerged were a desire to see environmental improvements to the estate, which has seen the formation of Environment Action Days. These events target means to improve the appearance of the estate, such as simple litter picking, which involves the local residents, fostering a proactive sense of involvement in their own community. The second theme was to have activities for local youngsters.

A Football Fun day drew 200 children and their families, which provided the children scope to make friends on the pitch, as well as engage in teambuilding exercises, and otherwise run off some of their youthful surplus energy. It also provided a way for families from different parts of the estate to get to know one another and therefore foster links within the community. Since the demographic of the estate has changed over the last 10 years, this also had the added benefit of helping to foster a sense of community across race and culture. A further initiative is set to provide multi-sports sessions at a local leisure centre two nights a week.

“The young people are our tenants of the future and they are making friends already,” Murray said. “What we say is, friends on the pitch, friends in the playground, friends in the street, and this will hopefully promote community cohesion.”

And maintain that remarkable transformation.