Residents see £250m future for their estate (From Basildon Recorder)

Residents see £250m future for their estate

5:10pm Wednesday 20th March 2013 in News

Excited - councillor Phill Turner, Mary Gibbons from Swan Housing, and council leader Tony Ball

DOZENS of residents ceased the chance to view plans for the next phase of the £250million regeneration of Craylands estate.

The Norwich Walk section of the run-down housing estate is set to be given a new lease of life as work will finally get underway next month to tear down the older homes and build 204 new properties.

Detailed proposals for 14-acre section, which constitutes phase 1c to 1f of the overall scheme, went on public display at Basildon’s Adult Community Learning College, in Churchill Avenue on Saturday.

Residents flocked to the college keen to quiz Swan Housing and Basildon Council on the plans which have been plagued by delays - with the ultimate question on everyone’s minds being “when will my house be knocked down?”

Antony Fama, 26 of Southwark Path, said: “To be honest I’m still a bit confused about which stage my house comes under, I think it would have been better to actually list all the addresses in each section rather than colour-coding them.

“At the end of the day everyone just wants to know when their home is next because personally it’s not too nice living here at the moment as there are a lot of problems. I lived here years ago and Craylands has always been like that.

“But hopefully improving the look of the estate and building on the community spirit here will really change things and make people take more pride in living here.”

Workers are already on site and are expected to start demolition work in April.

This phase of the revamp is expected to be finished by March 2015, with other parts of the estate to be rebuilt afterwards.

Emeline Snazell, 35, of Rochester Way, said: “It is long overdue these plans and I really do feel for some residents who are still having to wait whose properties are in dire need of renovation.

“Hopefully once it is all finished it will look nicer and people will be encouraged to maintain their properties well and come together more as a community. And if they change the name of the estate I think that will really help us lose that bad reputation and move on.”

The next sections on the cards for regeneration will be the Chichester Close and Jordan Way areas which form phase 2a and 2b of the proposals.

However, details of that phase have yet to be released.