The Regeneration Game

The Holly Street Estate has undergone a remarkable transformation. During the 1990s it was given a £97 million makeover and in 1998 Tony Blair hailed it as model development. Jeananne Craig visits the estate to see if life has really improved for its residents.

It is Saturday morning and the sun is shining on the Holly Street estate (above). The litter-free pavements sparkle, and light bounces off double-glazed windows.

But the streets are empty and the is silence somewhat uncanny.

Councillor Tom Price is in a quiet room in the estate’s recently refurbished community centre, conducting his regular drop-in surgery for residents. He admits that despite the bright new buildings, the redeveloped Holly Street still has its share of issues.

“This time two years ago there was an infestation of drug dealing going on. There were huge numbers of young people milling around like an occupying army at the junction between Freshfield Avenue and Middleton Road.

“People were turning up in black cabs from the City, looking to buy drugs for a night out; some would come from as far as Brighton. It was open all hours, like having a 24/7 Tesco on your doorstep.”

The problems culminated in the summer of 2005, when some 150 residents attended a meeting at the community centre and demanded that the council and the police took action. What followed was a two-month undercover surveillance project known as Operation Gamma.

The results were impressive: 18 men arrested on 97 different drug-related charges. Between them they are currently spending 67 years in prison. A front-page splash in the Hackney Gazette hailed the operation as a ‘Done Deal’, while the Metropolitan Police website lists Gamma as a success story while boasting a 7.9 per cent fall in general crime on the estate.

According to councillor Price, the improvements are immeasurable: “When I’m knocking on doors now people say ‘It’s made a massive difference, I’m not afraid of walking down to the shop now.’ That’s extraordinary.”

There is data to back this up: a council survey recorded that two years ago 68 per cent of residents wanted to leave the area; that figure is now down to 3 per cent.

“The council are better run than before, the Safer Neighbourhoods Team are doing a great job, and the Registered Social Landlords are taking their responsibilities much more seriously. We have great housing stock here, and good people working locally.

“That said, there is still drug dealing going on and we’re dealing with it,” Price adds. “Yes it’s better since Operation Gamma, yes it’s safer, but yes, there are problems which remain.”

One of these problems is knife crime. In October last year Holly Street resident and father-of-two Stevens Nyembo-Ya-Muteba was stabbed to death on his doorstep after asking a group of youths to keep the noise down. A media flurry ensued, with reports about knife and gun battles, and gang warfare between neighbouring rivals.

Jermaine, 16, lives on Holly Street’s Evergreen Square where Stevens was murdered. “There’s nothing much to do here for young people,” he says. “But we’re stuck because if we go to other areas we’ll get shot or stabbed up.

“There is a youth club with computers and that, but it’s all pretty basic. No one asks us what we want; it’s always adults telling us what to do. That’s how people get into trouble.”

In the aftermath of Operation Gamma, thousands of pounds were ploughed into a youth program to ensure that teenagers who had been acting as go-betweens for the older drug dealers would have a more positive future.

That money will run out soon, however. Shanaz Ali is a youth worker with CityZEN, the group contracted to carry out the youth diversionary project: “Our main funding finishes at the end of this month, and then we have funding for youth community workshops until the end of April. We’re in talks at the moment to secure second year funding; I’d be very upset if we didn’t.

“The young people here have a really strong sense of community, but adults still have a bad perception of them. We need more projects involving both groups.

“Teenagers here have more things to do and better access to the community centre now, there is definitely an improvement there. But on the other hand, with some of them it is still in their mind to get into mischief. There is only so much I can do, I cannot physically stop them from engaging in drugs and violence,” she adds.

Former Conservative councillor for the area Andrew Boff says that that without sufficient funding into youth provisions, the type murder that took place in October will “undoubtedly reoccur”.

“Operation Gamma did what it said on the tin but the frustrating thing is that when they made the initial arrests they didn’t think enough about why it happened in the first place. It hasn’t done a thing to resolve the deeper social problems in the area.

“There are still drugs about; in the bin areas there are needles and the paraphernalia of the sex trade. Drug pushers and pimps are targeting youths successfully, because nobody else is offering young people anything in the area.

“Young people need to be given the chance to engage in their community or these problems will come back,” he says.

Boff proposes an annual £30,000 subsidy from Hackney Council to facilitate activities and to improve on what he calls the “very small” drop-in centre on the estate.

“These young people need to have somewhere they can just hang out, not a formal youth club but a supervised coffee bar. When you look at all the money being spent in Hackney it is an obscenity that more is not channelled in this way.”

Despite her current “funding headache”, Shanaz Ali says she is optimistic about Holly Street’s future: “The estate is still quite infamous, that bad reputation is still there. But other than the murder I think it is safer. I’m hearing less and less of ‘We got stopped by the police’, and ‘He has to go to court’.

“We just need to continue promoting positive images, giving workshops on drugs and alcohol, and having football leagues with other estates. I’m hopeful we can turn things around here and get rid of the stigma for good."

Copyright of The Hackney Post