What it's like to live on condemned street

Published on 25th January 2007 in Letters

Sir - Much has been written of late about our Richard Cooper and Phoenix streets.

For us residents it is at night a dark walk with lamps not working and flickering street lights, drainpipes dangling and swaying dangerously and precariously, aerial cables tripping people's legs and wrapping round pram wheels, excessive litter, debris, falling masonry, dog faeces, shuttered-up houses, broken windows, abandoned and forgotten smoke detectors bleeping, lead stolen from our bay windows in broad daylight, leaky roofs, dodgy characters hanging round alleys robbed of flagstones, scavengers and scallywags looking for metal, half-inching boilers, fly-tippers, worry of burglary and depression - this is the daily life for us forgotten residents waiting for an uncaring and inefficient council to pull its finger out and find us homes, ignored by our uninterested MP.

We have been left to rot and deteriorate like the crumbling and vandalised buildings the council plan to demolish eventually, evicting us from our homes. And tomorrow is another day of the same - roll on demolition day!

Fed up and disgruntled resident

of Richard Cooper Street