Families gathered in a Livingston garden on Saturday night to say goodbye to the homes they’ve been fighting to leave for the last 18 years.
It has been an emotional week for Kerry Mackintosh and her two kids, and for neighbours Joe and Isobel Baxter, who finally moved to temporary accommodation last weekend.
That move marked the end of along struggle which left them living in leaking, damp and freezing-cold homes after it emerged they had been built from a discredited concrete mix called Siporex.
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Kerry returned to the garden of her old home to say thank you to friends and goodbye to neighbours… for now. They all hope to be back in the same street in new homes, within 18 months.
At the weekend a fire was lit in a brazier - suitably a refashioned cold water tank from a house - as the fence around her home was burned.
It’s the fence that has been the stand-out in Deans for the last few years. Amid the decay and darkness of boarded up streets, the fence around Kerry’s home was a splash of defiance - with its demands for a new home.
Latterly that fence, which bore the number 18 to mark the years she and her neighbours have been fighting for a new home - has been repainted in the colours of Springfield, the housing developer who eventually offered a home for a home deal as part of wider redevelopment of the area.
Neighbouring tenants have long since moved on and most of the estate of 240 houses have been demolished. Only two streets remain. As Kerry and her neighbours move out, a new street of council houses nears completion, with planned lets to start next month.
The 18 year dispute is all but settled. Kerry and the Baxters have moved out. Some neighbours will stay in the area, but will move into the new homes when they are built, also having accepted the home for home deal.
It has been an exciting and nerve shredding week for all. Kerry said: “It’s been really emotional. We’ve been packed up and ready to go, but still there was all this stuff at the last minute, and I wanted to leave a message painted inside the house, but I struggled to find the paint.”
She eventually did - leaving messages from her and children on the interior walls, much as Joe and Isobel did along the road before they locked up and watched the security teams fix grills to the windows.
On Saturday night Joe and Isobel arrived back in the street to join the party, and see the fire which had been lit to 'burn out the old and burn in the new'.
The Baxters were presented with the wrought iron house number rescued from their old home.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Isobel.
Around the brazier there were a few tears, as well as laughter, as the neighbours talked over the days since 2002 and time when they first learned that the houses they had bought - former local authority homes built by Livingston Development Corporation- were condemned.
It’s been a long time. Fraught with everyday anxiety within Deans as the estate sank into squalor with empty and boarded up houses regularly plundered and vandalised. At its worst, one neighbour remembered, they branded it “Beirut”.
There were memorable meetings with councillors, speeches made to council committees that didn’t want to hear them, and the eventual blunt admissions of council officials on the witness stand in a public inquiry.
Along the road from the fire, the laughter and the memories, security fencing shone like steel fortifications. Demolition is expected to start in Deans South early next month.
The neighbours will be back to watch as it starts - and there’ll be more tears, they freely admit.
But it’s a new start to a new street. Kerry and her family, and the Baxters, can’t wait to be back.
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