Hard work at the coalface

There’s one thing that everyone in Barnsley can agree on: it needs to change. Still languishing in the economic doldrums that followed the closures of coal mines in the 1980s, the area faces some of the toughest renewal challenges in the country.

Just four miles outside the town centre, the colliery village of Grimethorpe became synonymous with decay after featuring in the 1996 hit film Brassed Off. Thurnscoe, two miles down the road, marks the eastern end of the South Yorkshire market renewal pathfinder, designed to tackle widespread housing abandonment.

Barnsley itself suffers patches of very low demand, with one in three council houses classed as “difficult to let” last year, and has a town centre that councillors freely admit is unlikely to draw in wealthy shoppers.

The question of exactly how Barnsley should change, however, is controversial.

Architect Will Alsop’s plan to turn Barnsley into a walled “Tuscan hill village” is still the talk of the town, more than a year after it was launched.

The council’s housing is changing as well – in 2002 it was turned over to an arm’s-length management organisation, Berneslai Homes, led by Tim Harris. It performed well enough to secure £118m of government money to bring the homes up to scratch. But are the changes enough to make a difference?

Steven Green, managing director of residential and regeneration developer Yorkshire Land, is sceptical. “It’s very difficult working with this council,” he says. “It wants to dictate everything. We’ve seriously considered pulling out.”

He says the council has failed to convince local people that Alsop’s plan will happen: “It’s pie in the sky. Something needs to be done, but it’s not deliverable and a lot of people think it’s just a joke.”

The council is taking it very seriously, however, and has now officially adopted the masterplan. And while the Tuscan reference has attracted all the headlines, the basic idea is more prosaic: Barnsley’s town centre has become depopulated and Alsop wants to fill it with people again.

He says: “The city centre needs restaurants, people eating – so it becomes a destination. A living wall in the form of the Tuscan hill town gives it an identity.”

Chris Wyatt, urban regeneration group leader at the council, says: “We need life in the town centre and to change the cultural feel of the place – and we’ve already had a high level of developer interest.” Indeed, 400 town-centre flats are already in the planning process, including Gateway Plaza (left).

But it isn’t just the town centre that presents problems. A number of areas in Barnsley have suffered the same low demand. In Grimethorpe, in 2000, the average house price was just £19,400 and 13% of its homes were empty.

But since then, the hard work of the Grimethorpe Regeneration Executive has led to the first signs of recovery. House prices have risen and, for the first time since 1972, new homes are being built – a 330-unit development by Haslam Homes is on site.

Wyatt says the council is also pushing ahead with the Green Corridor initiative with Wakefield and Doncaster councils, which aims to reverse low demand across south Yorkshire’s coalfield communities. It’s working up a bid for £3m from the regional housing board.

Overall, there needs to be more of the kind of executive housing that could bring in the big spenders the region’s economy so badly needs. But Alsop’s vision will need to be supplemented by hard work, determination and cash to really turn the town around.