The Picture Above is of a Tower Block in Northwood, Kirkby. The burnt out Flat pictured has been left in the state you see for months. People still live in the block but Knowsley Council will soon be giving up ownership as they are part of the stock which is privatised now.They gave up responsibility years ago. Knowsley Council actually offered tenants of these flats £1000 to take in a refugee from Kosova. Similar blocks of flats in Liverpool have recently been condemned and closed down.Unbelievabely, it costs more to rent these flats then it does to buy a 3 bedroom house with a mortgage

I moved into ********* tower about 5 years ago and at the time it was a fairly decent block of flats with a live in caretaker and a fair population of older people. There were 4 blocks of flats all situated next to each other and I knew that two of the blocks in particular were going downhill with the usual Junkies and burglars. The problem of moving drug addicts into accommodation with decent tenants was acknowledged by Tony Blair who said "We all know the problems of our poorest neighbourhoods -decaying housing, unemployment, street crime and drugs. People who can, move out. Nightmare neighbours move in."(Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Foreword in Social Exclusion Unit, 1998; p.7)Blair was lying though, he has not got a clue and does not 'know' what it feels like to have to live in appalling accommodation. Pensioners who worked all their lives and fought in Wars were being left to die in Kirkby and all over the UK in High Rise Hells designed by clueless idiots.

I was unemployed and therefore my rent was paid by the DSS. If I had gotten a job then I'd have had to pay around £45 rent plus Council tax, which was another £8 or so. Despite the high rent, the block I moved into was fairly safe with a lot of Tenants who had been there a long time, some since the blocks were first opened up. The younger people there were in their thirties and tended to look out for the pensioners and generally kept the block in order.

A few months after I moved in I began to hear from the long-term tenants that the block was going a bit downhill. The live in caretaker didn't seem to living in and there was a little bit more vandalism than usual. I began to notice the odd bit of silver foil on the stairways in the flat, this is the leftover evidence from a skag head 'chasing the dragon', where heroin is placed on silver foil and smoked through a tube of some sort by heating the foil from below. The burnt foil was a sign that alerted me to what may well happen if this carried on. Myself and a lot of other people had seen Mercer Heights in Westvale turn from a decent place to a junkie's playground, the Council must know what happens when the junkie's move in and many believed it was an easy way of emptying a place of tenants so they could sell it off.

The problems I feared began to happen. With no live in caretaker the block was beginning to look scruffy and the vandalism became more frequent and more noticeable as the mess was often left to accumulate. The vandalism consisted of smashing windows, damaging the lifts, ripping off various parts on the doors and windows and often throwing them out the window, dangerous when its 14 stories high. The problems got worse and it was costing the Council an absolute fortune on just my block alone.

After complaining by letter and phone, I went to a meeting called by the council to explain the state of the block and to see what could be done. The meeting saw more council employee's than tenants, but I asked a few questions anyway and told them what I thought. We had to listen to some ex army bloke in charge of the latest security firm to be contracted to 'secure' the blocks. The bloke went on about how his boss was 'ex SAS', a fact that means nothing because this particular security firm is useless given the fact that things got a LOT worse once they took over.

We were also told that the new CCTV system was up and running. They put CCTV cameras in the lifts and on the roof of each block as well as at the entrance and the back. A few weeks later, the cameras in the lifts got smashed and the vandalism got progressively worse. I asked at the tenants meeting just how many convictions had been secured on the strength of footage being used from these cameras. They could not give the figures and promised to find out. I'm still waiting. I think they spent over £50'000 and have not got ONE CONVICTION.

Despite the Security Guards and the CCTV, the vandalism and the heroin use was getting to a level which led to the first few long term tenants leaving. One of the Old Ladies who lived on the ground floor for over 25 years had her windows smashed a couple of times and the windows in the flat itself were being smashed on a daily basis. The lifts were always broke. Often both would be down and older tenants and disabled were frustrated by the regularity of the lift being vandalised, which was a great inconvenience.

The repairs to this block must have been in the region of a few thousand pounds a week, you could have paid 5 live in caretakers and been able to save money but the Council perhaps threw money at repairs rather than solve the cause which was younger people accessing the block to drink, smoke weed, or take heroin. All that was needed was to stop the young people congregating in the block, a task not made helpful by the lack of facilities for younger people in Kirkby. The vandalism was a sustained and persistent problem easily remedied.

The actual flats are freezing in the Winter and it seems a bit stupid to leave these blocks without double glazing whilst there are other blocks in Kirkby which have been double glazed and centrally heated. Our block had been rumored to be having this very necessary improvement for years and we were all a bit taken aback when we all received a letter saying extensive building repairs would be carried out a couple of years ago. The rumors spread and we were soon dismayed to hear that all we were getting was a fresh lick of paint on the outside of the block and repairs to the windows as in fitting new handles!. The bloke who fitted mine chipped the window. The actual painting took months to do all the blocks, and weeks later the clean paint was again covered in the usual layer's of pigeon excrement and no doubt pollution from the industrial estate. The likes of Jim Keight and all the Housing Departments beurocrats would not live in my block for a week. And were they to be made to live in the worse Council accommodation, it may be a way of encouraging local housing beurocrats to employ architects who build homes and not concrete jungles.

I haven't mentioned burglaries yet, but sadly quite a few tenants of my block and the other nearby three blocks were burgled by the low life scum who do such things. It'll likely be skagheads, likely actual neighbors of the tenants, because there was quite a community of heroin addicts beginning to establish themselves now. Move the skagheads in and I've told you what happens there. Knowsley Council knows full well what happens, and residents of Kirkby could tell these bloody fools if they don't already know. To live in these Tower blocks is to more or less be constantly worrying about burglaries nowadays. No one with a job would ever pay the extortionate rent of £55 for a one bedroom flat in a slum conditions. Its very likely that the Council has moved paedophiles and other dangerous offenders to such accommodation, it seems likely that Kirkby is a dumping ground for these lowlife, if the Council could make a buck out of accommodating them, they would do so. Maybe someone out there's got figures somewhere. Send em in.

In 2001 we began to get a lot of mail from the Council telling us that it was a good idea if the Council handed over the bulk of the housing to a 'Trust'. We got so many things posted that we could have fitted double glazing with the bloody postage spent. The Council were all for the plan to effectively privatise the Council housing and it all made sense as the flats were being allowed to go to ruin. What better way to secure a vote to opt out of Council run housing by making sure people in Council housing suffered the problems outlined here. A bit like the Tories would run down a service before selling it off. It's a simple plan, and one, which causes misery in the community. The past few years of this neglect has effected the health of those living in these blocks of flats, especially the elderly, some of whom have sadly passed away in the time I've been there, others have gone into nursing homes as the vandalism and disrepair robs them of what was once a happy home. People had kept up a sense of community in these high rise blocks under difficult circumstances. Living in such a place it takes you years to get to know all the tenants and nowadays we have so many coming and going that you can never build up the trust which is at the the root of a successful community.

The past year up to early 2002 has been a nightmare. We currently in a transition stage whereby the 'trust' will take over the Housing and have to deal with the problems outlined. Many of us believe the Trust will be another beurocratic affair, apparently it won't run at a profit, but look at the wages of those at the top and I bet we see some profits being made alright. Right now, the block I'm in is a place I don't want to be. The vandalism, the burglaries, the gangs of youths drinking. I could go on but I've given a half decent description just outlining it all anyway. Another hundred pages would not do the real story justice, but I kept a notebook, which will go some way to trying to bring about legal action against Knowsley Council. I repeat again to Jim Keight and all the rest of the beurocrats, live here yourselves, take some of the crap you dish out to others, maybe we'd have the problem solved or even taken seriously then.

The First 4 months of 2002 has seen the Tower Block reach new levels of vandalism and neglect. I saw some security guards from Knowsley Council patrolling after a particularly determined spate of vandalism. After seeing maybe 50 odd windows replaced in the month of February I noticed that only several hours after the glaziers came, they were all smashed again! The vandalism in February saw hundreds of windows smashed including the main windows on the stairways which face the entrance. There was a lot of glass outside the block as it hurtled from a dangerous height to the floor. There was also a case where the actual controls to call the lift were ripped from the lifts and one lift was out for several days as it was repaired. The gangs of youth drinking and smoking weed in the block is worryingly high, the Caretakers never bother to chase kids away anymore and the result is that the Block becomes a community center for the kids and a magnet for every vandal in Town. After they get smashed the block gets smashed, and the age of some of these kids is as low as 11 or 12. The handles were ripped from just about every window costing (yet again) a fortune to replace. The handles are of cheap low quality (just like Knowsley Council) and have been replaced dozens of times. They are very dangerous as kids hurl them from the top floors to passers by below. The vandalism really has got to a point where I cannot wait to leave this run down Junkies paradise.

The Council still have an obligation to look after and maintain the place but they have began to just board flats up now as Tenants flee the vandalism and no-one wants to move in now save the Junkies and various dodgy characters. Every last tenant I have spoken to is leaving or planning to. No-one thinks the flats will be up another 5 years and therefore it's not worth spending the Thousands you would normally spend on a Home. The Place is likely going to be knocked down so most of us are looking to find new accommodation. It is a criminal way to conduct affairs but Knowsley Council have kept tenants in the dark for years and now conveniently pass the buck to another organization. Hopefully I will sue them in Court, but I won't be surprised if I don't get nowhere cos the Law is an Ass . I will leave you the people to make your own minds up as to whether or not my grievance is right. This is just a small example of how Working Class people have to put up with the crap dished out by the Local Councils here in the UK.

Updated Oct 2002

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Nov 2002 Update: The flats described here are in a worse state than ever. (2003 updates also)

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