Hesters Way

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Hesters Way is an area in the western part of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. It is home to Gloucestershire College of Arts and Technology(GLOSCAT) and Pate's Grammar School. In accordance with the last Census the district has a population of 5,605 and an average unemployment rate of 4.75% of people who are of economically active age, which is 16-74.

Hesters Way has a relatively large retail centre within it named Coronation Square which includes two supermarkets (Farm Foods and Somerfield) an opticians, a dental practice, a café (Carmello's), a newsagents, two charity shops, two betting shops and a variety of fast food outlets.

Hesters Way is also the generic name for a larger area which includes the council wards of Hesters Way, Springbank and some of St Peter’s and St Marks, and is amongst the 20% most deprived areas in Britain. It has a population of 15,583 Maiden and includes the largest social housing area in Gloucestershire. It was originally built as a council area in the 1950s and 1960s to house people working for GCHQ and local engineering companies. Changes that took place over the following thirty years adversely affected the area and reflected changes in society in general. Owner occupation, structural changes in the economy and the make up of the housing stock and subsequent housing allocations led to a concentration of relative poverty in this area of predominantly social housing. By the late 1980s the contrast between Hesters Way and the rest of the town was evident. By the mid 1990s there was recognition that the area had become a serious issue for Cheltenham as a whole. Hesters Way has been the focus of regeneration over the last decade with a newly built community resource centre and the demolition of several blocks of council flats (most recently Pakistan House and India House) which were derelict and deemed an eyesore. They are systematically being replaced by a mix of private and housing association houses.

In addition several new private housing developments are currently in progress, the largest of these being on the site vacated by GCHQ, when it moved to its new site, this also located in Hesters Way. More information about Hesters Way including text and pictures from three volumes of local history is available on the Hesters Way Neighbourhood Project website

Hesters Way has developed its own culture within Cheltenham, becoming the centre of a news report in which it was alleged that the Cheltenham Ladies College had created the term "chav" in relation to the youths who lived around the area, it stood for Cheltenham Average. However this has been disproved as the orientation of the term chav in the modern context^{[citation needed]}.

Gloscat - Gloucestershire College of Arts and Technology