Dovecot doesn’t have a one stop shop for council services, but it does have Lin Doyle.
“I'm like a one stop shop on my mobility scooter,” the 63-year-old jokes as she sits inside an empty St Luke’s Church Community centre on Princes Drive. It is from here she runs a free community debt advice drop in on a Thursday afternoon, where she’ll also signpost benefits, point people in the right direction for housing support and locate food for those in need.
All this comes under a role she has made for herself, and one she undertakes voluntarily - gradually expanding in the 22 years she’s been working within the Dovecot community. Lin’s main focus however is children in the local area, many of whom are still likely to be processing the murder of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt Korbel - a tragedy that has torn through this tightly packed collection of terraces in the east of the city.
READ MORE: ‘Fed up’ Dovecot community helped to get justice for Olivia
Thomas Cashman, 34, will spend the next 42 years behind bars after being found guilty of Olivia’s murder just over a week ago. But the harrowing impacts of his indiscriminate gun fire on August 22 last year continue to haunt the streets of L14 - the furthest reaches of Liverpool on the Knowsley border.
Simmering underworld tensions may have led to the tragedy, but Dovecot has already had to carry the weight of a straining 12 years of austerity which has seen its facilities erode and provisions stretched. Lin, who has received a British Empire Medal for her community work, points to the “void” of youth focused services after a raft of brutal Government funding cuts, with her own kid's clubs only available to children up to the age of 11.
“I have to let them go [then],” she says with reluctance, explaining how teenagers left out in the open with no direction can end up being “easy pickings” for county lines drugs operations. But she is quick to praise the services and groups that work tirelessly to keep Dovecot and its neighbouring areas away from breaking point - those such as the Young Persons Advisory Service (YPAS), Priority Youth, The Drive and Deysbrook community centre among others.
“Dovecot is always made out to be a really bad place but it is not,” she says, “there are a lot of hard working people here that have jobs, struggling like everyone else at the minute, adding: “Gas, electric, mortgages have nearly doubled. It's bound to have a knock on effect.”
The murder of Olivia Pratt-Korbel has added to the list of challenges. But Lin believes it is the community can build on work already being done to reach those vulnerable to being recruited by drug gangs.
“We are a strong positive community and we can get people through this,” says Lin, “there is a lot of good going on in Dovecot and we want people to focus on that moving forward.
“If a child wants to talk, we're there for them. No one will ever forget [what happened to Olivia].”
'Chipped away and broken up'
One marker the local area hopes will become a beacon of hope in the years to come is Olivia’s tree. Planted by Lin’s community groups, it could prove to be the first roots in the ground for a memorial garden outside of the Dovecot Labour club, known locally as The Bunker due of its lack of windows and natural light, which sits at the top of Kingsheath Avenue where Olivia was killed in her family home on that awful August night.
The Bunker is one of the few provisions to have stood the test of time in Dovecot on this side of East Prescot Road, according to Marie Fulham, a member of Dovecot neighbourhood council and who has volunteered in the community for the last 50 years. The 87-year-old lists the loss of the Longreach youth centre, five-a-side pitches, swimming baths, a cinema and bingo hall in her lifetime living in the area.
The building where she ran her lunch club and food bank was converted into the Multi Activity Centre and Communiversity in 2011, a project which was first set up in Croxteth. But the changes meant the initiative had to find a new home elsewhere in Dovecot due to a lack of room, she says.
“When my children were growing up, we had everything,” says Marie in her front living room, “but their children have had nothing,” adding: “[Everything here has been] chipped away and broken up until they have nothing at all.
“It’s like they don't want to know once you come past Queens Drive. We're a forgotten part of Liverpool.”
'We need a stronger and more united community'
If Dovecot has been forgotten about on the edges of the city, then The Bunker at the top of Kingsheath Avenue exemplifies this in some ways - no longer the thriving Labour club it once was. But equally, it could now be the foundation for a lasting memory and for something positive to be established after such darkness.
It’s somewhere familiar with John Prince, a councillor for the Yew Tree ward within Dovecot since 2008. Like so many others in the area, he has witnessed significant change.
“I still remember when both the Mab Lane and Knotty Ash Community Centres were closed,” he recalls. “An officer’s report described them as ‘surplus to requirements’ - that line has stayed with me because of course they weren’t.”
He says that the area was “fortunate” that YPAS moved into the Mab Lane site, who he says continue to do “great work”, but L14 residents “were not as fortunate” in terms of the other site.
“We don’t forget about the area and we fight for it every day but there is a significant level of deprivation and the area needs investment from the Government,” he says, adding: “There is no library [on this side of East Prescot Road] or leisure centre.”
Cllr Prince says there have been tensions between different community groups and figures in recent times. Some of this appears to centre on the future of The Bunker.
“There have been arguments about it,” he explains, “I think it needs to be managed by the community, but it is underused and I think it could be a community hub.
“I think people need to come together and put their differences aside. The bottom line is we need a stronger and more united community.”
'It needs care and love'
Local Labour MP Ian Byrne is one of those pushing to see the Labour club become the backdrop for Olivia’s memorial garden. He too is keenly aware of the wider challenges the area has faced in recent decades.
“I grew up in Cantril Farm, not far from Dovecot and so I know that feeling of dislocation,” explains the sitting West Derby MP. “There are people in the area who have been there for 60 to 70 years and just feel like they haven’t been listened to for far too long.
“I think Dovecot just needs to feel as though it is part of something more and is getting attention and being listened to. It needs care and love.”
Like many Liverpool politicians, Mr Byrne has spent most of his political career, and plenty of time before that, campaigning against the austerity agenda that has seen the fabric ripped from the communities he cares deeply about. Dovecot, like so many other parts of Liverpool, has been at the sharp end of these cuts.
“The city has suffered terribly with the decimation of youth services and that has hit Dovecot badly. I had a letter recently from a community police officer in the area who had been getting reports of youths congregating.”
Speaking to the youths on the street corner, the community office learnt they had “nowhere to go” but wanted to go and play football. Sadly there were no facilities or youth centres, “not like we had when I was growing up,” the MP says, “it was really sad - they just had nowhere to go.”
He continued: “We need to be investing in young people because if we don’t, the void will be there and criminal gangs will then fill that void. We have got so much potential in our city and so much potential has been lost to criminal gangs because people don’t see any alternative.
“The drugs gang leaders will be looking at huge groups of kids who feel like they have no opportunities and they are picking them off - they did it in the 80s and they are doing it again. In a cost of living crisis, after 13 years of austerity, there has never been a more dangerous moment. This needs to be a wake-up call.”
The MP knows that the Dovecot community is extremely resilient. But that resilience has been put to the test more than ever over the past nine months since Olivia’s murder.
“Now Dovecot needs some proper investment for the future and not top-down investment where it gets given to agencies that don’t know the area,” he says. “it needs to be focussed on community stakeholders and that’s something I will promote and champion from my office. It is the community that knows the solutions to the problems we face.”
'We don’t want this tragedy to define us'
In the days and weeks that followed that harrowing night last August, The Drive Centre in Kingsheath Avenue acted as a safe space for a stunned and grieving community to meet, cry and crucially, to pass on information about who they thought was behind this most heinous of crimes. At the time, the centre’s manager Joanne Kennedy had been increasingly worried about rising tensions and violence between local gangs before things reached a tragic crescendo.
“You could sense the tension rising in the environment,” she tells the ECHO, “we heard about these shootings, they had become a regular occurrence in the build up to what happened.
“We felt like we were caught in the middle of a gang turf war. I think we didn’t quite realise at the time what and who had been amongst us in our community - how close to the community this had got.”
While nerves set in ahead of the trial verdicts being read out last handed down to Cashman. Joanne believes the community now has a stronger relationship with the police and a more powerful voice of its own - a counter to reporting by some media outlets in the aftermath of the shooting.
“There was an assumption that people here were protecting those that did this and that was never the case,” Joanne explains. “We had people coming in with names and information and intelligence right from the start. People were quite annoyed at that suggestion.
“As an organisation we feel like we do have a better relationship with the police now. I think our concerns are now being heard.”
But like many others, Joanne feels investment is now badly needed in Dovecot to take it forward. Something that has been lacking for a long time.
“There is a long-standing feeling of being forgotten about, austerity obviously hasn’t helped that,” she says, “we want to see investment in the area, in the young people here. We don’t want this tragedy to define us.”
Clear, hold, build
From a policing point of view, a process of Clear, Hold, Build is one way Merseyside Police can “start to repair that trust and confidence” which had previously been damaged, according to the force’s Chief Constable Serena Kennedy.
“We've done that in the Dovecot area,” she says, “the start of that was to arrest 420 people from across Merseyside, executing 98 warrants, and taking 11 firearms off the streets of Merseyside.”
The chief constable adds that the force is now “into the Hold and Build phase". In many ways this is the most crucial point to enable L14 and its relationship with the police to turn a corner.
The chief constable continued: “The Hold is really important because it's important that we hold the ground, that we don't let those gang members get a stronghold back on that community.
“That gives us the breathing space to work with the community, understand what their priorities are, understand what they want partners and policing to do in their communities, but they decide those priorities for themselves. So that we enable the communities to start to problem solve for themselves, build those stronger communities so that they don't tolerate the levels of organised crime that we sometimes see.
"Communities are frightened, so therefore they tolerate it. I absolutely want every community in Merseyside to have confidence that they can report these things that are happening in their communities and they shouldn't tolerate it. So we have stronger communities through the work we're doing with Clear, Hold, Build.”
As for those who will be fostering links on the streets, Jo Matthews, Community Coordinator with Liverpool City Council’s Community Safety Team, believes there is now a steadfast commitment to turning the tide. It’s one that will hopefully see the police, local authority, heath services and education all pulling in the same direction.
"All of these people are committed to working together", says Jo, "I think that's having a positive effect on the community as well. We're not coming into the area and saying 'we think we know what's best for you', we're coming in and saying 'how can we help you? What can we do to support you? What do you think we can do to make this area a better, safer place to live?' People want to talk, people want to help, as well.
“It isn't that we've got huge pots of money to do this, we're being realistic, we're trying to work with what we've got, but also attract additional funding if we can, or additional partnership work, additional resources, whatever that may be. But I think it is about utilising what we've got on the ground already and strengthening that.”
The limited pots of money may end up being the sticking point. Goodwill can only go so far in an area that has seen its provisions stripped back, little by little, year after year - even with the likes of Lin Doyle doing her best to cover all bases.
“We're not miracle workers, we wish we were,” says Lin Doyle about her hopes for Dovecot’s future, “we were here before [what happened to Olivia], we’ll be here after it happened. We’ll be here to pick up the pieces.”
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