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‘Cinderella’ district due for a £100m makeover
Cash will help deprived street boost trade and attract visitors
FOR residents living in Church Street, with its soaring unemployment, squalid overcrowding and rundown estates, Marylebone High Street, little more than a mile away, may as well be another country.
All that is set to change as the council announced that the borough’s most deprived neighbourhood has been earmarked for a £100million regeneration scheme.
The regeneration masterplan will target the area’s crumbling housing stock as a priority, before setting out to revamp the historic open air market, one of the oldest in the capital, to boost the number of shoppers coming into the area.
Of the 12,000 residents living in mainly social housing, one in three is unemployed, literacy and numeracy rates are some of the lowest in the country, and life expectancy is just 67 – a staggering 16 years younger than people who live in Belgravia in the south of the borough.
Under the ambitious proposals there will also be more open spaces, a new crèche and childcare centre and better cycling facilities.
Rosemary Westbrook, director of housing at Westminster Council said: “There is a genuine sense of community and a real pride in the neighbourhood and we are determined to help lift this area out of its current levels of deprivation.
“We will work with the local community to create a regeneration masterplan to transform Church Street into a place where people of different ages, lifestyles and incomes live, work and visit.
“This regeneration scheme will focus on housing, open spaces and boosting the area’s local businesses. We believe it will hold the area in good stead for the next 50 years.”
The plan is in its early stages, with residents and local businesses set to be invited to work with the council’s planning and design teams in September.
Church Street has long been seen as the Cinderella of the borough, suffering from the construction of the Westway flyover in the 1960s, which cut the area off from Paddington. |
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