THE MARSH FARM ESTATE
Planned in the mid 1960's, Marsh Farm is a mixture of private and public sector housing, with five schools, two nurseries, a shopping centre, lots of green open spaces and good community facilities including ‘Wauluds Bank’ the site of a Mesolithic camp that dates back as far as 3000BC.
The estate sits in the Luton Borough Council ward of Northwell and is made up of:
• 3,200 households
• a total population in the region of 9,200
• a population biased towards the younger age groups, with 26% aged under 16, and 7% over 65 (compared to the national figures of 21% and 18% respectively)
• The community is very diverse and since the 1991 census, the number of residents from black and other ethnic communities has risen to approximately one third of the overall estate population, and the major ethnic groups on Marsh Farm are: British (62%) African-Caribbean (15%) Pakistani (9%) Bangladeshi (5%)
In 1995 our estate made international news headlines after several years of niggling tensions between local police and groups of local youths erupted into 3 nights of running battles, involving hundreds of local people and hundreds of riot officers deployed from the Metropolitan Police in London.
Marsh Farm had already endured several years of institutional neglect, with levels of worklessness and deprivation more than double the Luton average, and a population with very little faith - if any - in the integrity and good intentions of government at either local or national level.
The events of 1995 only made things much worse, with both of our local supermarkets closing down, unemployment levels soaring even higher as the name ‘Marsh Farm’ became synonymous with ‘trouble’ - both in job interviews and in the local papers.
When Marsh Farm residents (and lots of other people living or working in deprived communities throughout the UK) were visited by representatives from the Social Exclusion Unit in 1998, and asked to share our views and opinions about what our main problems are and how best to resolve them, it seemed that the government was at least serious about listening to the voices of marginalised people.
When a report based on these consultations was released (called ‘Bringing Britain Together’) we were pleasantly surprised to see that the SEU representatives had not only obviously listened carefully to what people had said to them, they were also advocating many of the solutions we and many others had proposed.
Some of the key solutions we were advocating were:
Genuine empowerment of local people in making decisions affecting the community (for years our local councillors had not only failed to listen to the views of local people, they were renowned for being high handed and too remote from the people living here)
A 10 year programme of substantial funding instead of minimal amounts to be dispensed over 2 or 3 years (as was the norm at the time – Marsh Farm had been given £400,000 SRB money after the events of 95 which had made very little impact at all)
Funding to pay for set up costs for community businesses which could create local jobs for those most in need of them whilst ‘locking in’ the socio-economic benefits arising from the businesses (the multiplier effect)
Funding to purchase a massive empty factory which sits right in the middle of the estate (known locally as The Coulters building) for use as a base for these community businesses, which could be housed alongside key service providers, space for small private businesses, a social club and community group offices/rooms.
In 2000 Marsh Farm was one of hundreds of communities invited to bid for just under £50 million New Deal for Communities funding. To secure these funds representatives of 33 Marsh Farm based community groups and dozens of individual residents (supported by Renaisi, a London based delivery agency) worked for a whole year with key partners (the council, PCT, Luton University and others) to turn all of our ideas into a cohesive strategy. In December 2000 we submitted a fully costed 10 year delivery plan called ‘The Phoenix Rises’.
It was an ambitious plan which set out our vision and the strategies we would use to rejuvenate our local economy, to re-invigorate our local democracy and to strengthen the social and community fabric which was then - and still is now - the glue holding our community together.
In April 2001 Marsh Farmer’s were told that our bid had been successful at the first attempt and that we could access £48.3 million over 10 years to turn our vision into a reality. The New Deal for Communities rhetoric still reflected accurately the findings and the solutions set out in the ‘Bringing Britain Together’ report so was very encouraging from a residents eye view.
Here began our efforts to revive our local economy, starting, of course, with the purchase of the 90,000 sq ft empty factory described in The Phoenix Rises plan as ‘The Jewel in Marsh Farm’s Crown’
