The other Kensington

It shares a name with one of the wealthier districts of London, synonymous with money, high-class shops and extravagant housing. But Kensington in Liverpool, barely a mile from the newly thriving city centre, is languishing at the bottom of the economic pile after years of neglect.Many shops in the long parade are boarded up or struggling for survival among the plethora of newsagents and the clutch of hairdressers.Chris Markham, 69, a former welder, has lived in Brae Street in L7 since 1958. On the corner of his street, an advertising hoarding urges people to contact a solicitor for compensation if they have suffered an injury. There is a pet shop on the main road opposite and a newsagent in between the boarded-up shops. On the deeds of the house, it describes it as a middle class district of Liverpool. Over the years I have seen that change, he says. When we moved here there was a postmistress, a teacher and a policeman who lived round here - all people with good, stable jobs. As people became more affluent and got cars, they began to move out of the district to nicer places. There has been an influx of one-parent families and people brought in by housing associations. There is a drug culture and I have seen women fighting in the street, with young ones effing and blinding. It began to go downhill in the 1970s. It was something that was creeping and encroaching very slowly - you were hardly aware of it. Then our friends started leaving the area. He says his family was in a quandary about what to do, as their four children were settled at school, so they decided to stay. I feel trapped in a way, he adds. But I am quite philosophical about it. We have been really aware since the 1980s that there are druggies, after we found syringes, needles and aerosols in the streets, with prostitutes prowling about. Markham is actively involved in community groups and the regeneration of the area. People are working to improve things and I am hopeful we will succeed, he says. Nancy Rix, 75, has lived in Connaught Street for 40 years - where training shoes are strewn over telegraph lines. Bored teenagers do this as part of a bizarre gang initiation process. The sound of police sirens occasionally wails in the distance. Rix, who never married, goes regularly to the Sacred Heart church. When I moved here, if you lived on this side of the road it was considered posh, she says. People used to say we were looking down on them because we were on the top of a hill.There were all sorts of working people with good jobs - teachers and solicitors and the like. I worked in a nursery for 49 years.It took a while for the area to go downhill, but it suddenly did. There are a lot of drugs, which has made it a nightmare. In the last 25 years it has gradually deteriorated because of the drugs and the troublesome families who have been coming in. The real Kensington has disappeared and the whole place has become an eyesore. She points to the rather shabby shops, which are derelict or scarred with metal grilles as a powerful visual indicator of how things have deteriorated.I like to go to the greengrocers for fruit, to the shoes butchers and to get milk delivered by the milkman. But these shops and services are fighting for survival and nearly every shop is boarded up. Even if she wanted to move, she couldnt afford to as her neat terraced house is probably only worth £20,000 having been worth as much as £40,000 a few years ago.Despite the problems, the sense of community spirit is still palpable. My neighbours are very good, Rix adds. I cant lie in bed for long in the morning before they are knocking on my door checking that I am OK.She blames the government for the problems of the area and says no one could have predicted the nightmare decline four decades ago. The parish priest up on Edinburgh Road has had his house robbed twice. The sad thing about the drugs is the deaths of the young people. I know of three of them in their 30s who are dead due to drugs.She reckons the best era to live in Kensington was during the 1960s and 1970s. Enid Bristow, 66, has brought up nine children in the area where she has lived since a teenager. When I moved here you were lucky to get a house in L7 because they were so popular, she says. You were welcomed to the street by your neighbours with a cup of tea. But you wouldnt get that now.The kids are out on the streets until all hours of the morning and you cant talk to them anymore because they just give you cheek. It used to be a good shopping centre, but that has gone and there are drugs and prostitutes along Holt Road. There were three shootings there over a 12-month period.Despite the problems, I will still walk around at night because it is my neighbourhood and I know it really well. I am not frightened and I dont want to move. But things are beginning to change in Kensington as millions of pounds of EU money are pumped into the area. A newly opened Wetherspoon pub and a new McDonalds restaurant are widely hailed as the first tentative steps towards regeneration.Stephen Boyle, chief executive of Kensington Regeneration, which is bringing £61.9m into the area, says the biggest challenge is the housing market.There has been a large influx of asylum seekers, he says. Although they are not a problem in themselves, they bring with them further problems with poor housing and unscrupulous landlords.The area has poor access to healthcare, there are few GP surgeries, no cashpoint machines or financial services, and shops are on their way down. Crucially, there is no secondary school, so children living in Kensington attend 30 different schools scattered across the city. There are plans to build a new school, which could be opened in 2005. A blueprint for the area will be announced in the spring by Kensington Regeneration. But whether Kensington will ever be regarded as a pleasant middle-class suburb again remains to be seen.

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