A RESIDENT who lives in a deserted tower block has refused to leave after being offered more than £7,000 to move.
The Seven Sisters tower blocks in Rochdale, Manchester, were built in the 1960s but plans were announced to demolish four of the blocks six years ago.
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And residents have now been offered cash by Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) to move out of the once bustling College Bank estate.
Paul Walker, 79, has lived on the 8th floor of the Town Mill Brow block for 33 years, which RBH say is around 70 per cent empty.
He said: “It doesn’t make any sense to me (demolition), these are good flats that they could be making money off.
“I’ve been here 33 years and I’m 79 now, I don’t want to be moving, my health isn’t good enough for it. I get letters through every few months offering if I’d like to move but I’m not going to.
“I’ve got my whole life here why would I want to be moving? It’s in a perfect location for me to get to the supermarkets, into town or any buses. It’s definitely quieter now.
“On my floor of six there’s two other flats filled so there’s still some people to say hello to but not as much of a community feel as there used to be.”
Another resident echoed Paul’s sentiments, saying: “There’s no way I’m leaving, I’ve been here 27 years, I’m not going anywhere.
“It is very quiet now, there’s not really the same sense of community that there used to be. I don’t want to see them go and I don’t think they will be able to remove them with the people still left.”
However, other residents have revealed that they have taken up the offer to move house.
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Stephen Byram has lived in the same building for the last five years but has decided to be moved to a new flat.
“Living conditions here aren’t the best, it’s been getting worse in the time I’ve been living here,” he says.
“It seems like they’ve stopped bothering since announcing knocking down, you hardly see the caretakers anymore. It’s difficult to know what’s going on. They did start boarding up doors of people that were moving out but they’ve now been taken off, but we don’t get told about anything.
“It’s not fair on the older people, they don’t want to be going. People just don’t know what’s going on, do you stay and hope or go somewhere that might not be as good, it’s pretty negative either way, some people have been waiting as long as two years to leave. It all looks very sad now.”
Others believed that encouraging people to leave with cash has brought some benefits to the area.
Paul, who has lived in the Dunkirk Rise block for 25 years said: “Paying people to leave got rid of a lot of the bag heads, the kind of riff-raff that were causing some problems.
“It might be good for the council to take it back over as they can give flats to the right people who need it.
“A lot of people just went for the money straight away, it’s a better area now if anything.”
RBH say demolishing the blocks is key to their plan to regenerate College Bank and its surrounding area over the next two decades.
But local campaigners have not given up the fight to save the blocks, arguing that homes they believe to be perfectly good will be lost.
And they were given a new hope by a government decision earlier this year that gave Rochdale council permission to re-enter the market by opening a Housing Revenue Account (HRA) with no “legacy debt”.
Starting from scratch with a balanced bank account would open the door to the council owning and managing its own social housing stock again.
Chair of the College Bank Support Group, Mark Slater, a resident of Mardyke, which is not a condemned block, said the reopening of the Housing Revenue Account gave long term residents “hope”. “This is people’s forever home, some people have been here since they were first built, people over 90 years old,” he said.
“Where else are you going to move people to in the town centre? People get everything they need living here.
“People have built lives and their support networks here, we didn’t expect the amount of response and community support we ended up receiving. This is a battle for the whole of Rochdale, not just the community.
It’s not fair on the older people, they don’t want to be going. People just don’t know what’s going on.”
Stephen Byram, local resident
However, relations between RBH and the council have been increasingly strained over the years with the proposals to knock down the tower blocks heavily criticised by councillors.
RBH has previously said it would be “willing to facilitate the council taking on responsibility” for the Seven Sisters, if it came forward with “a realistic alternative plan”.
Councillor Danny Meredith, whose motion – together with former councillor Sultan Ali – was key to reopening the HRA account and creating the chance of bringing the blocks back under council control, said: “You can’t be knocking down 400 flats in a housing crisis with 22,000 on the waiting lists for homes.
“We’ve commissioned two reports about bringing them back under council control which will take in a lot of factors.
“The reason they are in the state they are in now is due to managed decline. They should be trying to do the best for the community.”
Cllr Meredith said it would be another six to 12 months before the reports are finished.
An RBH spokesman said: “Our team are providing tailored professional support to all residents in the four blocks scheduled for demolition.
“Mitchell Hey is now 91 per cent empty (109 out of 120) and Town Mill Brow is 73 per cent empty (88 out of 120).
“We have not yet started to proactively rehouse residents in the other two blocks (Tentercroft and Dunkirk Rise); however, support for rehousing is available to residents in those blocks who wish to access it.
“Our project to remodel and refurbish the Underwood block is underway, with an estimated investment of over £12m.
“In addition to this, we are currently investing around £20m across all seven blocks on improvement works. This includes fire and evacuation alarms and upgraded doors
“We have a dedicated Neighbourhood Environment Team who carry out cleaning and environmental management in College Bank, as well as our Community Guardians who provide a visible and reassuring presence in the neighbourhood. Our repairs team continue to carry out any day-to-day repairs in College Bank.
“If residents have any issues that they would like to draw to our attention, please contact us and we’ll make sure that it gets sorted.”
It comes after a family-of-four cramped in a two-bed home claimed their housing association won’t let them swap for a bigger house.
Meanwhile, a man who refused to move when his home was threatened to be demolished has now seen his property worth 42 times more.
And a homeowner who lives in a “ghost town” has revealed he was offered £35k by the council to move out.
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