‘Are you building communities or just houses?’: human cost of Birmingham council’s plans for Druids Heath estate

Birmingham city council has approved plans to knock down most of Druids Heath, with homeowners offered market value plus 10% for their properties. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

Xylia Legonas was just a few years off fully repaying her mortgage and had just finished refurbishing her house after a fire when someone knocked on her door in 2023 and asked if she was aware of the Druids Heath regeneration project.

“The first thing I thought: ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to knock my house down’,” she recalled. “He basically said yes and I thought: ‘What am I going to do? Where am I going to go?’”