Autonomous Geographies: littlelondon

About Little London

Little London is an inner city housing estate in Inner North West Leeds comprising approximately 2185 homes of which around 1351 are Council owned. Little London was originally developed as a residential area during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Mill owners and merchants built large family homes here to “escape the soot and smoke that choked the streets of Leeds” (Little London Tenants and Residents Association 2000a: 6). The name “Little London” apparently derived from the desire to “impress speculative buyers” during the building boom of the time (Little London Tenants and Residents Association 2000b: 6).

Little London experienced several small scale clearances during the early 20th century and, after the Second World War, the area’s Victorian terrace and back-to-back housing was subject to wholesale demolition under the policy of “slum clearance”. From the late 1950s to the early 1980s, Little London was redesigned and redeveloped in several stages as a brand new council housing estate. The post-war planners created an estate composed of several mini-localities defined by the type of residential property (high-rise flats, low-rise maisonette flats, terraced and
semi-detached houses and bungalows) demarcated by both natural and deliberate geographical boundaries. Parts of the estate were built in the Radburn style layout meaning limited vehicular access to people’s homes. The estate’s highest tower blocks are largely positioned on the high, south side of the estate, on the edge of the city centre.

Local people interviewed for this project agree that up until the mid-1980s, Little London was “the place to be”, a “buzzing estate” where “everyone wanted to live” (Interview A). However, the onset of industrial decline and mass unemployment in the 1980s combined with a policy shift away from investment in local authority housing has gradually taken its toll on the area, which has become one of the most socially deprived electoral Wards in both Leeds and the country. None of the local authority owned housing has had any significant investment since it was built. Leeds City Council acknowledged this in its 2001 bid for PFI funding for Little London:

bq.The Council properties in Little London have not benefited from any major renovation or improvement programmes. Whilst the stock built in the 1980s does not require significant action currently, the remaining stock requires improvement action to bring it up to modern standards and renewal action for some building elements (Leeds City Council 2001: 13).

This long-term neglect has almost certainly increased the rate of tenant turnover. Over time Little London has become what one Council officer calls a “schizophrenic housing market” : on the one hand there is a stable group of older, long-term tenants and residents who make up the area’s backbone; and on the other, there is a relatively new and much less stable group of mainly younger people who tend to suffer from unemployment and social problems and who form the area’s transient population (Interview B). The residualisation of council housing has been key to this development.

The community is further defined and divided along nationality, race, ethnicity and everyday life experiences, as well as by geography. While the majority of the community is white British, a large minority are from post-war migrant backgrounds (Eljay Research 2005). The more recent refugee migrants are often resented and blamed for the area’s problems by sections of the established community. While the predominantly white, stable and established population tends to live in the low-rise terraces and maisonettes, the racially mixed, highly mobile and highly dependent community tends to occupy the high-rise flats. The exception to this is the sheltered accommodation.

Little London’s deprivation qualified it for funding under the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) Rounds 1 (1995 – 2001), 3 (1997 – 2003) and 5 (2000 –2006), as well as European Objective 2 status. The 2001 Census placed the majority of Little London within the 10% most deprived Super Output Areas of England and Wales in the Index of Multiple Deprivation, and in 2005, an area of Little London was calculated as being in the top 3% most deprived areas. Subsequently, LCC has designated Little London as one of six Neighbourhood Management Areas in need of intensive intervention for four years with funds from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (2006-2010) (Leeds City Council 2005, 2006)

References
Eljay Research (2005), ‘A Household and Postal Survey of Residents of: Little London, Leeds’, August 2005, Appendix 20.1
Interview A, Interviews with present and former tenants and residents of Little London
Interview B, Interview with Huw Jones, Strategy and Intelligence Director, Re’new, 30 October 2006
Leeds City Council (2001a), ‘Private Finance Initiative for Housing Revenue Account, Round 2. Expression of Interest, Little London, Leeds’, February 2001, Appendix 2
Leeds City Council (2005), ‘Little London – Neighbourhood Management Draft Proposal’, October 2005
Leeds City Council (2006), ‘Little London & Woodhouse Neighbourhood Improvement Plan, 2006 – 2010’
Little London Tenants and Residents Association (2000a), ‘Little London News’, autumn, issue 7
Little London Tenants and Residents Association (2000b), ‘Little London News’, summer, issue 6

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