Minto Close update

It is about three weeks since I met C7 officers, wardens, council staff and local residents to see what could be done about the area behind Minto Close.

We heard about problems with youths using the debris from the demolished flats to put windows through, drug dealing and drug taking, fly-tipping and fires. While we walked about the area to the rear of the empty and derelict flats on Kensington we had to step over a few dead rats. Charming!

Local people have been fobbed off for years, literally years, with excuses and delays while all around them the whole place has decayed.

Minto Close is really quite nice, everyone looks after their gardens and keep their homes very nicely. But all around them it reminds me of those films of Belfast in the 70s.

I do hope that having taken the various agencies there myself, by the hand so to speak, and shown them the state of the place, we might finally see some action.

Since our meeting, we have seen some (very limited) action from Lovells, the building company who are supposed to be building new houses on the waste ground. They have cleared away some of the debris (although not enough of it.) What we need is for them to start building, more and more deadlines come and go and still nothing ever happens.

The clean team have been and cleared up a lot of the fly tipping but it is a bit like King Canute trying to hold the tide back and will stay that way until the new houses are built.

I am not holding my breath though.