Seven tower blocks stand proud and tall over Rochdale. Minutes away from the town centre, the 'Seven Sisters' were a feat of engineering when completed in the 1960s.
However, campaigners and residents say the estate, officially known as College Bank, has been in a state of 'managed decline' since Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) took control of the council's housing stock in 2012, despite RBH saying they are investing £20m on improvement works across the estate.
Six years ago plans were announced to demolish four of the blocks at Seven Sisters, and this year residents were offered more than £7,000 from RBH to move.
Many have jumped at this opportunity, but some, having built their lives here, do not want to leave the four blocks facing the wrecking ball.
With no new lettings in any of the blocks while RBH look to rehouse people from the condemned ones, the exodus of neighbours has sucked the feeling of community from the once bustling estate, with dirty buildings and boarded up garages blotting the landscape.
Just 11 of the 120 flats in the Mitchell Hey block, the furthest away from the town centre, are currently occupied. The M.E.N's Lyell Tweed reports.
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I sat near the Mitchell Hey block for nearly an hour looking to speak to one of the residents, in which time roughly half a dozen people passed.
Some were simply cutting through from further afield to get to the town centre, while others were from different blocks which have slightly more life to them.
"There’s no way I’m leaving, I’ve been here 27 years, I’m not going anywhere," one resident from neighbouring Dunkirk Rise said on her way back from shopping. Dunkirk Rise, like Mitchell Hey, Tentercroft and Town Mill blocks, has been earmarked for demolition.
"It is very quiet now, there’s not really the same sense of community that there used to be. I don’t want to see them go and I don’t think they will be able to remove them with the people still left," the woman told us.
"They are definitely looking more run down now," she said. "The caretakers do a great job though in keeping it clean with litter and stuff, it's tidy considering there's only one bin between here and town. It would be good if they were taken back by the council and to get some more people back in so there’s more of a community again."
RBH say demolishing the blocks is key to their plan to regenerate College Bank and nearby Lower Falinge over the next two decades.
But local campaigners have been fighting to save the blocks, arguing that homes they believe to be perfectly good will be lost. They've been given new hope by a government decision earlier this year that gave the council permission to re-enter the market by opening a Housing Revenue Account (HRA) with no ‘legacy debt’.
Starting from scratch with a balanced bank account would open the door to the council owning and managing its own social housing stock again, a move backed by residents spoken to by the MEN.
Rochdale Council transferred its housing stock to RBH, which describes itself as a tenant and employee co-owned mutual housing society, back in 2012 - a time when many other Greater Manchester councils were handing responsibility to not-for-profits set up for the purpose.
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However, relations between the council and RBH have become increasingly strained over recent years, with the housing organisation's controversial proposals to knock down four of the Seven Sisters as part of a regeneration masterplan fiercely criticised by councillors across the political spectrum.
RBH has previously said it would be ‘willing to facilitate the council taking on responsibility’ for the Seven Sisters, if it came forward with ‘a realistic alternative plan to generate the £90m-plus needed to fund the works to all seven blocks at College Bank’ - something it's hoped the re-opening of the HRA would allow.
Paul Walker has lived on the 8th floor of the Town Mill Brow block for 33 years, which RBH say is around 70pc empty. He says there are two other flats occupied on his floor of six, but overall there are "less familiar faces around".
"It doesn’t make any sense to me (demolition), these are good flats that they could be making money off. I’ve been here 33 years and I’m 79 now, I don’t want to be moving, my health isn’t good enough for it. I get letters through every few months offering if I’d like to move but I’m not going to.
"I’ve got my whole life here why would I want to be moving? It’s in a perfect location for me to get to the supermarkets, into town or any buses. It’s definitely quieter now. On my floor of six there’s two other flats filled so there’s still some people to say hello to but not as much of a community feel as there used to be."
Stephen Byram has lived in the same building for the last five years but has decided to take up the offer of payment and to be moved to a new flat.
"Living conditions here aren’t the best, it’s been getting worse in the time I’ve been living here," he says.
"It seems like they’ve stopped bothering since announcing knocking down, you hardly see the caretakers anymore. It's difficult to know what's going on. They did start boarding up doors of people that were moving out but they’ve now been taken off, but we don’t get told about anything.
"It’s not fair on the older people, they don’t want to be going. I think some people were offered as far away as Heywood and Middleton. People just don’t know what’s going on, do you stay and hope or go somewhere that might not be as good, it’s pretty negative either way, some people have been waiting as long as two years to leave. It all looks very sad now."
Some told the MEN that encouraging people to leave with cash brought some benefits to the area. Paul, who's lived in the Dunkirk Rise block for 25 years said: "Paying people to leave got rid of a lot of the bag heads, the kind of riff-raff that were causing some problems.
"It might be good for the council to take it back over as they can give flats to the right people who need it. The messaging has been very vague about it, I've got to know a lot of people around here and they don't want to be leaving.
"A lot of people just went for the money straight away, it’s a better area now if anything."
A Tentercroft resident of 18 years, a male pensioner said: "It used to be quite rough around the shop, kids outside kicking a ball around and drinking and stuff but it’s got very quiet in the last few years. A lot of people seemed to take the offer of money straight away, it could pay for a lot.
"It is quieter now. I saw a light come on in that building (Town Mill), the other day, which was the first I’d seen in a while."
On our second visit to the blocks I bumped into active Save College Bank campaigners Roy Kitcher and Christina Hartley, who live on Tentercroft's eight floor. They regularly knock on all the doors they can across the Seven Sisters to keep residents updated on the progress of their campaign.
They tell the distressing story of a resident who is a private tenant in one of the under threat blocks who faces eviction and homelessness as his landlord has accepted payment from RBH to move. They are supporting the resident in fighting this, concerned that RBH are pressing ahead with plans to move residents out despite the council being in the process of producing reports; one exploring the possibility of bringing the Seven Sisters back under local authority ownership, and a second that will look into building council houses in the borough for the first time in 20 years.
Chair of the College Bank Support Group, Mark Slater, a resident of Mardyke, which is not a condemned block, said the reopening of the Housing Revenue Account gave long term residents "hope". "This is people’s forever home, some people have been here since they were first built, people over 90 years old," he said.
"Where else are you going to move people to in the town centre? People get everything they need living here.
"People have built lives and their support networks here, we didn’t expect the amount of response and community support we ended up receiving. This is a battle for the whole of Rochdale, not just the community.
"There are 22,000 people on waiting lists for homes in the whole borough but there are at least 350 empty flats here. Why have people in temporary housing when there are good flats here? People have had no idea what’s going on for years since it was initially announced, it’s been in a state of managed decline."
Ben Clay, a member of the Greater Manchester Tenants Union, who supports Mark with the campaign to Save College Bank, echoed these sentiments. "These blocks are a landmark, you can see it from everywhere. It’s part of the fabric of the community, you always find that talking to people here," he said.
"All architects and similar people we’ve spoken to say they are very good for high rise buildings. They would lose nearly 500 homes if they knocked down these blocks, it’s something the community can’t support."
Mark added: "We want honest and open decision making. The council moving forward with what they are doing gives people hope."
Councillor Danny Meredith, whose motion - together with former councillor Sultan Ali - was key to reopening the HRA account and creating the chance of bringing the blocks back under council control, said: "You can't be knocking down 400 flats in a housing crisis with 22,000 on the waiting lists for homes.
"We've commissioned two reports about bringing them back under council control which will take in a lot of factors. The reason they are in the state they are in now is due to managed decline. They should be trying to do the best for the community."
Coun Meredith said it would be another 6 to 12 months before the reports are finished into whether they could come back under council control.
What Rochdale Boroughwide Housing say
In a statement to the Manchester Evening News, an RBH spokesman said: "Our team are providing tailored professional support to all residents in the four blocks scheduled for demolition. Mitchell Hey is now 91% empty (109 out of 120) and Town Mill Brow is 73% empty (88 out of 120). We have not yet started to proactively rehouse residents in the other two blocks (Tentercroft and Dunkirk Rise); however, support for rehousing is available to residents in those blocks who wish to access it.
"Our project to remodel and refurbish the Underwood block is underway, with an estimated investment of over £12m. The block will be completely transformed inside and out to create the quality of homes that our tenants and residents expect. Residents within the block are part of the steering group working to develop these plans.
"In addition to this, we are currently investing around £20m across all seven blocks on improvement works. This includes fire and evacuation alarms and upgraded doors.
"We have a dedicated Neighbourhood Environment Team who carry out cleaning and environmental management in College Bank, as well as our Community Guardians who provide a visible and reassuring presence in the neighbourhood. Our repairs team continue to carry out any day-to-day repairs in College Bank.
"If residents have any issues that they would like to draw to our attention, please contact us and we'll make sure that it gets sorted."
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