Archive 2003: The Fall and Rise of Myddleton Road

A council has teamed up with a community group to devise a ‘regeneration’ plan for a single street – Myddleton Road.

 

By Paul Coleman.

 

Behind the dusty windowpane, shirts and ties are bleached sepia by the sunlight. The sign on the door of the men’s clothing shop says: ‘Closed. Sorry.’

While the peeling gables above the shops stand as proud reminders that Myddleton Road was once an elegant, Victorian confection of thriving shops and smart houses, the abandoned shop window display typifies the street’s decline in more recent times.

Years ago, the road’s shopkeepers lost their regular customers to the revamped Wood Green Shopping City, a mile up the road – the regeneration of one area has displaced environmental decay and economic decline to another.

“Local people’s anger at the decay and decline of Myddleton Road simply boiled over in 1999,” says Catherine Herman, a local resident for 14 years. “A public meeting was called. Over one hundred people crammed inside the local nursery. We formed the Bowes Park Community Association and demanded that Haringey Council work with us – as partners – to reverse the downward spiral.”

The London Borough of Haringey responded by developing a neighbourhood regeneration plan focused on this single road, which was described as “a jewel in decline”. If the Myddleton Road plan succeeds, it could become a model for community-led regeneration in other parts of Haringey.

“If it fails, many of us will be demoralised and will leave,” warns Herman, who is chair of the BPCA.

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The road’s decline has hit local people hard. Charlie Lucas, a local barber, says: “My shop and this street are my pension. I just can’t move away. This road has been my life for 21 years.”

Lucas’ shop is one of Myddleton Road’s 73 retailers, many of whom sit beneath converted flats that provide temporary accommodation for an increasing number of homeless people and asylum-seekers. Unfortunately, certain landlords have taken advantage of the increased demand for temporary accommodation, converting rear storage areas into flats without planning permission.

Other shops lie empty, concealed by solid roller shutters. Graceful Victorian frontages have been ripped out, replaced by a muddle of grimy plate glass framed by cheap timber. Harshly lit fast-food signs compete with ‘one-way street’ notices that many drivers ignore. Double-parked trucks load up at builders’ merchants. “I forgive people who can no longer see this as a conservation area,” says Herman.

The growth in the number of families living above the shopfronts has generated a five-fold increase in domestic waste. One of Haringey’s street wardens tells of seeing an Albanian woman carefully placing a plastic bag of rubbish in the middle of the road. The woman thought she was doing the right thing, but a truck scattered the rubbish almost immediately. The Council is now translating its household waste procedures into different languages.

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“Local people were angry that Myddelton Road has got so bad,” says Patricia Costa, who has lived in the area for nearly 20 years. “Rather than moan, we sought quick improvements.” The BPCA galvanised Haringey’s councillors and officers to work with West Anglia Great Northern (WAGN) railways. The fractured surface of a dimly lit railway footbridge, connecting Myddleton Road to Bowes Park station, was re-laid at cost of £20,000, paid for by Haringey’s Neighbourhood Renewal Fund.

Until recently, vandals, graffiti ‘artists’, and drug users haunted Bowes Park station. The ticket machine was constantly smashed. Waiting rooms became locked cages with steel doors and window mesh. But the BPCA’s 350 members persuaded WAGN to remove fresh graffiti. A local funeral director offered to install a CCTV camera for the footbridge. Haringey Arts Council, WAGN and the BPCA turned the waiting room into an artist’s studio, which opened in April.

Now the BPCA wants one of Myddleton Road’s abandoned shops to become a community arts workshop. “The days are gone when Myddleton Road had a baker, butcher, and candlestick maker,” says Costa. “But arts and culture can attract new people and money.”

The Council secured NRF for a community development worker, Rani Khan, to work exclusively on Myddleton Road for two days a week. She started in April 2002, and her first task was to gain the confidence and trust of local people. “I took a lot of flak at first,” says Khan. “People shunned me when I said I was from the Council. Gradually they got to know me. They told me about their concerns and ideas for Myddleton Road.”

The BPCA’s next target was to transform a scruffy piece of land owned by Thames Water, near the New River, which runs to the east of the road. The group worked closely with Khan to secure £30,000 from the London Waterways Single Regeneration Budget and a maintenance budget from Haringey’s neighbourhood management service, while Thames Water leased the space to the Council for ten years. Now, two of Haringey’s street wardens hold the keys to a community garden for children and families.

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Andreas Antoniou is the owner of the Vrisaki restaurant on Myddleton Road, which was voted ‘London’s Restaurant of the Year 2003’ by Evening Standard readers. He doubts whether Haringey can deliver its Myddleton Road neighbourhood plan. “Rani Khan has worked hard for us,” he says.

“But she doesn’t have enough power. Bad landlords have brought rough people to the area. Wood Green Shopping City destroyed most of the shops on this road, but Haringey Council did nothing for ten years. If I was a councillor I would close Myddleton Road’s shopping area to traffic, turn it into a pedestrian area, and plant lots of trees.”

Khan has helped many asylum seekers gain access to adult education, English language support services. and health services. Myddleton Road has sizeable, established Greek Cypriot, Turkish, Asian, and Somali populations. “But asylum-seekers make the population seem increasingly transient,” says Khan. “Pressures on local resources can create tension. But there is a remarkable community spirit in this area. The biggest problem on Myddleton Road is a hidden pocket of urban deprivation.”

Regeneration is hampered by Myddleton Road’s location in the heart of Bowes Park, a relatively prosperous residential ward – the eighth wealthiest of Haringey’s 21 wards.

Myddleton Road lies between the high-profile deprivation of Tottenham and the affluent Haringey ‘villages’ of Crouch End and Muswell Hill. The Government’s indices of multiple deprivation 2000 ranks Bowes Park as 1,388th most deprived out of 8.414 wards in England.

Myddleton Road also sits outside Haringey’s own Heartlands regeneration area. The road itself scores highly on the multiple deprivation index, with many households lacking basic amenities and high number of children in families which are dependent on benefits.

Yet if was not for the NRF cash that comes with Haringey’s status as one of the 88 most deprived local authority areas, Myddleton Road would have been overlooked by almost all of the Government’s regeneration funding schemes.

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Haringey Council’s approach to Myddleton Road is, in many ways, straight out of the textbook. Based on the neighbourhood approach to regeneration advocated in the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal, it is guided by the Office of Deputy Prime Minister’s July 2002 paper, which says the local development frameworks should play a key role in local authority policies towards specific neighbourhoods.

In the past, council attempts to stop Myddleton Road’s decline by rejecting planning applications for the conversion of buildings to hostels, bedsits or ‘houses in multiple occupancy’ have failed. Arguing that such conversions are in keeping with the area’s existing housing stock, property owners have won planning permission on appeal.

But the situation was leading to an ever-more transient population, and the Council-approved Myddleton Road neighbourhood plan clearly states Haringey will no longer grant such planning permissions. It is hoped this will give the Council ammunition in fighting appeals, but the plan is not legally binding and cannot guarantee a halt to conversions.

Bob Goldsmith, Haringey’s neighbourhood development manager, believes the neighbourhood plan can tackle patterns of property conversion. Higher standards of housing design can be set, and other local authorities will be discouraged from dumping homeless families on Myddleton Road.

The plan states that Haringey will try to prevent shops being turned into homes, industrial units or warehouses. It says Haringey will work with local firms that generate and support local jobs but will get tough on ‘bad neighbours’. Full, upgraded planning control and environmental health enforcement measures are promised. In short, errant landlords and businesses can expect ‘a blitz’.

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“Myddleton Road has taught Haringey many lessons,” says Goldsmith. “The BPCA has shown us how community groups can forge working partnerships with other organisations, such as Thames Water and WAGN. The NRF money spent on the the community development worker’s salary was good value. We’re rolling out some of this community development work to another needy estate in Hornsey.”

Funding remains Haringey’s sticking point. “We seek and secure short-term Government funding for projects such as street wardens,” says Goldsmith. “But then the Government tells us to ‘mainstream’ these new projects without increasing our annual revenue support. The Council knows that the neighbourhood plan will raise local people’s expectations. But people in the area have learnt they can make changes through their own efforts and energy.”

Costa interprets the learning curve differently. “People around Myddleton Road have learnt that it takes a big effort to secure small changes,” she says. “Myddleton Road mustn’t be flavour of the month and then forgotten. Local people have generated a good community spirit, and we deserve better.”

 

Note: This article was first published in September 2003.

 

© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence ® London, UK.