St Matthew's

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The St Matthew's estate is an area of inner city Leicester. It is immediately to the north-east of city centre and is bounded by the A594 ringroad to the southwest, the Belgrave Road to the northwest, the Humberstone Road to the southeast. To the north-east it is separated from Belgrave by ex-railway land (the Leicester branch of the Great Northern Railway passed through it).

It has a population of around 4,500. It is named for the Anglican church of St Matthew's. The area was previously small factories and slum housing (much of it back-to-back houses), and was redeveloped in the 1970s as council housing.

The area is isolated (there being no adjacent residential areas, and being cut off from the city centre by the dual carriageway ring road), and is generally considered the most deprived in Leicester and one of the worst in England. The area now also has a large Somali community, and since they are one of the poorest performing comunities (in terms of academic achievements and employment rates) they have been blamed by some for the area now being the second poorest area in the UK [1] Efforts at regeneration in the 1990s and 2000s have been partly successful but the area still has a high unemployment rate.

Having lived on the estate for seven years the biggest change to the character of the estate was the demolition of two 15 storey tower blocks and subsequent decrease in the number of drug addicts and other socially challenged individuals which has made the estate much safer in terms of crime levels. The increase in the proportion of immigrants on the estate has certainly made the estate safer to live on.

The physical environment of the estate has disimproved drastically due to unfounded security concerns been given priority over quality of environment. For example the hawthorn hedges surrounding the parks have been cut down on the instructions of the local police. This has had a devestating effect on some bird species, wrens, hedge sparrows and robins. The use of defoliants on a massive scale has also contributed to environmental degradation. Recycling facilities are very poor and litter continues to be a serious problem.

I have asked for a breakdown of spending on the estate under the FOI act but the figures continue to remain hidden in overall council spending. 7 CCTV cameras were installed at a cost of £450,000 in 2004 and have not fulfilled their stated purpose of reasuring public safety, and in fact seem to be being used for police surveillence operations, a purpose they were not supposed to be used for. The estate has a rental income of about £4.5 million p.a. but very little of this money is spent on the estate. The quality of repairs and maintenance continues to be of a very low standard.

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