For 15 years, they've stared at rubble - now their neighbourhood is finally being revived

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

After almost 15 years of staring at rubble, residents in Derker are about to see their neighbourhood transformed. Work has finally started on more than 100 new homes on brownfield sites at Cromford Street, London Road, Evelyn Street and Abbotsford Road.

The Victorian terraced houses that used to stand on the sites were demolished as part of a controversial ‘housing renewal scheme’ that ‘destroyed a whole community’, according to the few remaining residents.

The scheme was abandoned by the coalition government in 2011, with the plots left to the weeds for more than a decade. Now Hive Homes has started construction on 132 new two and three-bedroom homes, which will be a mix of private and affordable housing. “It’s finally happening,” shop owner and post master Narinda Kaur said.

Her shop - Singh’s Supersave - has overlooked London Road for 32 years and she has witnessed the ‘destruction’ of a ‘big community’. “It was like a bereavement,” Kaur previously told the Manchester Evening News. “Everybody felt it.