Residents have pleaded for funding to help improve life in Openshaw West.

Sheila Smith has lived on Meech Street for 55 years and says the area has become the city’s ‘forgotten estate’.

Despite years of campaigning for improvements to the estate, she says the council has repeatedly failed to give it a facelift.

The streets nearby – Dunstan Street and Coronation Street – are filled with boarded up houses and broken windows. Sheila, 77, said: "When I first moved here, it was the area to be.

"Everyone wanted to live here and it was full of nice families.

"But as time went on, people died or moved out, so different people moved in who didn’t take care of the properties. It just got worse and worse."

Residents grouped together to lobby the council for improvements in the mid-1990s.

Regeneration funds were redirected to the Bradford ward – which Openshaw sits in – by New East Manchester.

But Sheila says the money was spent outside Openshaw West.

She said: "Beswick got a lot of the money, as did Higher Openshaw.

"But we’re right in the middle and we didn’t get any of it.

"It’s like an ulcer.

"The bit in the middle is the bit that needs attention, but after a while you start concentrating on the bits around it, not the core.

"I had a man come to change the electric meter and he told me it was like Beirut outside.

"Soon people who want to leave won’t be able to get out, they won’t be able to sell their houses." Now Sheila is urging council bosses to sit down with residents to come up with a solution.

She said: "They’ve agreed to meet with us, so there is light at the end of the tunnel. But we’ve been here before and then the light went out."

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