Goscote, West Midlands

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Goscote is a residential area of Walsall in the West Midlands of England. The Goscote name dates back several centuries and as recently as 1920 it was a rural area that had survived the recent Industrial Revolution which dramatically altered the face of the region.

But a mile or two away in Walsall town centre, hundreds of families were living in squalid and sub-standard housing. The local authority placed these properties under compulsory purchase order and more than 400 families were rehoused in new homes built at Goscote. The new homes at Goscote were a world of difference when compared to what their occupants had previously lived in. All homes had electric lighting, running water, modern kitchens, bathrooms and indoors toilets. Some people around Walsall were still lacking these facilities in their homes 30 or 40 years later.

A number of other homes, including several for private buyers, were built around Goscote over the next few decades.

By the 1980s, Goscote was notorious throughout Walsall as a crime-fuelled "sink" estate plagued by vandalism, drug dealing, arson attacks, graffiti, fly-tipping and countless other offences. The local youth centre was closed in the late 1990s and subjected to a series of attacks by arsonists and vandals before it was finally knocked down in 2001.

In February 2007, Walsall Housing Group announced plans to demolish 281 interwar homes in Goscote in a bid to improve the area. The organisation owned 236 homes (103 of which were empty), while a further 45 had been bought by tenants under the RTB scheme. Redevelopment is set to begin 2009, and most of the condemned houses are now empty. A handful of houses on the estate had been demolished earlier in the 2000s; most of these were already derelict and been too severely damaged in vandal and arson attacks to be worthy of repair. Walsall Housing Trust are hoping to complete the redevelopment of the Goscote estate by 2013.

When the regeneration of Goscote is completed in the early 2010s, it is expected to contain a mixed development of private and rented homes, most of which will be two- and three-bedroom houses. There will also be improved road links with neighbouring areas including Blakenall Heath and Harden, addressing the area's current feeling of isolation. There will also be an increase in public amenities.