800 days to save Stoke

In the kitchen of a café tucked away on a side street in Burslem, two women made breakfast for a small cohort of loyal customers. Over scrambled eggs, they explained how the town had changed over the last few decades.

The closure of the potteries has had a major and lasting impact on the city. Unemployment rates have consistently averaged above both the regional and national rates, while in some areas of the city up to two-thirds of children are estimated to be living in poverty.

It was the decline of their high street which was perhaps most sorely felt. The evidence of decay surrounding the café was unavoidable. A glance up and down the street yielded boarded-up shops covered in graffiti, and a discarded sofa resting on the pavement. People here still had a strong emotive vision of what the town used to look like. As one of the women explained, the closing down of industry had taken footfall with it, making it very difficult for any new business to open.

“All these shops around here that are boarded up were open before. They are all beautiful buildings … Burslem needs a facelift; they don’t care about the town. It used to be the mother town of Stoke. I’ve seen it at its best and now at its worst. There’s no council investment. Businesses are opening but failing to thrive. There’s no footfall. The Daltons factory closed. My stepdad worked there. The footfall from that just went when it closed ... it was years ago, but we still feel it.”

Frustration at the state of their town centres was universal. People in Stoke shared a memory of a time when people would regularly visit the towns, particularly Hanley, for shopping or a night out. Those days were long gone.

“Everyone used to go to Hanley; my mum and nana would go shopping there all the time. They don’t go there anymore.”

The idea of regenerating the high street was not new here. People were aware of the promises that had been made to their communities. One woman rolled her eyes when the conversation turned to levelling up, and the idea that investment might help bring life back into her high street.

“I moved out of Hanley; all this regeneration that was promised, it never happened. It’s not safe after dark to go out, I just had enough. I’ve moved out the towns.”

For many, the decline of their high streets was driven by the rise in crime and drug use. Outside the Post Office in Burslem people moved quickly, afraid to loiter too long on the high street. As one retired woman explained, looking over her shoulder, there was nowhere else safe to withdraw cash:

“All the banks have closed. This is the only safe place to get money out. My mates have been robbed at the cash point, one had £400 nicked.”  

Crime and the corrosive impact of ‘monkey dust’ (the local slang for spice) was not far from anyone’s lips. A young woman in a shop in Hanley confirmed how the last few years had brought with them a vast reduction in footfall, with the benches on the town centre now full of drug users. She saw crime and low-level anti-social behaviour as the key reason people were no longer visiting the high street. This, she concluded, was a result of the lack of police presence in the city.

“They’re all on monkey dust. We need more police; there are drug dealers on the streets in broad daylight, literally right now. No-one is doing anything about it. It didn’t use to be like this."

While most agreed more police were required to keep people safe and clear up the high streets, others were keen to point out that the very visible drug use – as well as homelessness - was also down to a lack of investment in the city. As the Arnold Bennett enthusiast in the charity shop explained, people here were getting no help. He wanted to see investment in the form of new house building but had no faith the Government were serious in their commitments to the area.

“Stoke needs investment and places for people to live. Down this street, have you seen the tent with the toys for the school holidays? That’s for kids to play in during the day, but people sleep there at night. How is that right?”

This view was shared by the retired couple in Burslem, who agreed Stoke was no longer the place that their hero once wrote about.

“I think Arnold Bennett would have a shock if he saw it [Burslem] now. The very house where he was from is now a doss house.”

Across the city, there was little sense that much was being done to halt the decline and deliver meaningful change. The pub regulars in Burslem bemoaned what was happening to their city. For them, Stoke had been deprived since the potteries closed, with so many businesses and venues folding in the aftermath.

Importantly, the investment they were seeing was not what they expected, and what new buildings did spring up, they were not proud of. It certainly, to them, was not evidence of levelling up. They were particularly scathing over the new hotel developments, which in their eyes were doing nothing to help the areas where they lived.

“I don’t think there are more places in the country with shut-down places than Stoke.”

The youth centre staff in Hanley shared the same frustrations; they believed the focus on car parks and hotels was of secondary importance when so many shops on the high street remained empty.

“Look at the money they have spent: why bloody car parks? We don’t need another car park; there are so many empty shops.”

While for those running their own businesses, there was little belief that the Government was doing all it could to support them. For the restaurant owner in Hanley, high business rates were a barrier to new shops opening on the high street, and the Government seemed to be in no rush to turn things round.

“They need to drop the business rates. The big shops are closing down and nothing is replacing them, because business rates are too high … I pay £200 a week business rates, that’s before you add VAT, insurance etc.”

Early afternoon in Stoke and two members of bar staff could be overheard discussing their rising bills at length. While pouring a pint, the older of the two worried about how her children keep growing and need an ever-lengthening list of shoes and school uniforms, explaining that her husband now uses spreadsheets to keep track of every penny they spend. The younger man grimaced as she talked, but quickly deferred his own fears as he punched an order into the till.

“I’m not worried yet, I put money in a meter [so I can control my spend]; I will be worrying later though.”

The study was launched to a gloomy national backdrop. News that day put inflation at over 10%, while rail strikes made travel to the city slow and cumbersome.

The cost-of-living crisis is expected to make Stoke one of the most fuel-poor parts of the country. In 2019, Stoke-on-Trent Central had 9,275 households in fuel poverty. Research from End Fuel Poverty estimates that, as of April 2022, this will rise to 18,463 - leaving 47.3% of households as ‘fuel poor’.

Stoke’s towns themselves were a picture of looming recession: high streets sparsely populated, with shoppers going about their business briskly. In Hanley, the ‘mother town’ of the six towns and the commercial centre of the local area, pound shops, discount supermarkets and fast-food chains were the only businesses enjoying a healthy level of footfall.

Despite the enduring heatwave, the atmosphere on the streets was fearful, punctured by a teenager loudly taking issue with a street preacher over the existence of God, given as she argued, life was so difficult; indicative of the frustrations felt by many.

Fear of the coming months was universal. In the kitchen at the café in Burslem, the workers drew breath at the idea of winter. They were expecting life to get extremely difficult, with one woman making clear she planned to feed her cats before herself.

“I’ve noticed the huge price jumps in petrol. I only work twenty-five hours a week; by the time I’ve paid rent and I’ve fed the cats there’s not much left; whatever is left goes on groceries.… Holidays are thing of the past. I don’t go out, don’t drink, my hobbies have had to stop.”

She was far from alone in considering cutting back on food. Further up the road, a nurse, with her young son playing at her feet, explained over tea how worried she was for the town. Despite noting how relatively better off she was than most in the area, the women conceded her son was the only one who gets “decent food” in their house.

In Hanley, the previously beaming restaurant owner instantly changed demeanor when asked how the cost-of-living crisis was impacting business. Gesturing round at the barely half-full establishment, he muttered that they now solely relied on retired people to keep the business going.

“Last week was the worst week for business in the twenty-five years we’ve been here. Less people are coming in; we’re only open four days a week now, and we’ll often close about 3pm if people stop coming in … We’re going to have to put our prices up, for the first time in four years. We’re still cheaper than Costa though.”

The impact was being felt across the city. At the youth centre evening meeting, rising costs were offered apologetically as an explanation as young adults were informed that a hoped-for trip abroad was no longer feasible. Two workers, who both lived and worked in the centre, sadly noted after the session that the cancellation would be sorely felt.

“One of the best opportunities we have seen for young people is international residencies; we’ve had to cut back on that…. Most of these young people have never had a passport, never been abroad, never been to the beach.”

Fears were not limited to the coming winter; many we spoke to simply could not see an end to the struggle. Even the idea of handouts or other interventionist measures from Government to handle the crisis were glumly accepted, with questions over how sustainable that approach could be, given that many feared the crisis may last years.

“Okay, the thing that bothers me [about handouts] what happens next year? It might get us through this year but what do we do then.”

Sitting in the backroom of a garage in Stoke, the establishment’s owner brewed the kettle with the sounds of mechanics at work in the background occasionally causing him to pause (the initial ‘five minutes max’ time commitment, long forgotten). He has voted Conservative for the last twelve years he explains, because they ‘they do more for us’ - noting that he is not typical of those from Stoke.

But even as someone who believes the Conservatives have supported Stoke over the last twelve years, and helped him and his wife do well, he is now apathetic about the state of politics and holds out little hope that the area will reap the benefits of levelling up investment.

“We are not typical for Stoke, I run this place [the garage], my wife’s got a good job, she works for a bank....[but] I’m pretty worried for them [my kids] career wise; one wants to be a teacher and one wants to work in the bank.”

Politically, much has changed in the city during that time. Stoke-On-Trent Central was held by Labour continuously from 1950 until the 2019 General Election, where the Conservatives won the seat as part of a wider trend of formerly safe Labour seats flipping to the Tories. At 69.4%, Stoke-On-Trent recorded one of country’s highest votes to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.

Speaking to people across the six towns of Stoke - in their homes, places of work, and leisure - the sense of civic pride that people who live here feel was palpable. They take great joy from city’s rich history and community spirit. But its decline has been sorely felt, with the cost-of-living crisis seemingly turbocharging its descent.

The downward spiral has brought with it substantial political frustration towards both the Conservatives and Labour. At the pub in Burslem, there was no mistaking the anger at the state of politics. Patrons here were keenly aware of the levelling up promises made and not delivered.

“That Rishi Sunak, he came up here telling us he was going to ‘level up’, then the next day he was at a garden party down south telling everyone he wasn’t going to.”

The conversation here quickly flowed into a referendum on Boris Johnson’s premiership, with many who had voted Conservative for the first time at the 2019 general election unhappy to see him stand down. The ‘Boris’ factor was a strong motivator in people’s Conservative vote. People across the city praised his authenticity, as the nurse in Burslem put it, the former Prime Minister was a ‘human’.

“Why did we get rid of Boris? He was forced out.”

The precariousness of the Conservative support here was evident. Many people we spoke to were first time Conservative voters in 2019 and felt no love or loyalty towards the Party - citing personal affection towards Boris Johnson, or a distrust of Labour and Jeremy Corbyn, to justify their vote.

“I won’t vote Tory [at the next election], the working-class man should run this country… but I would vote for Boris Johnson”

Support for Boris Johnson was not universal among Conservative voters; some were keen to see the back of him. For them, the scandals had gone too far, and they had grown wary of the political news, with partygate still drawing an emotive reaction.

“He had to go, he was partying, you can’t do that. I didn’t break the rules, why should he?”

Strikingly, when talking politics, people in Stoke would often quickly revert to talking about Brexit. From conversations with working men in the pub in Burslem, people at the football, or shop workers in Hanley, Brexit was politics.

With a communal sense of overwhelming political apathy, their Brexit vote was for many the only politics that engaged them. They had voted for change, an improvement in their lives and surroundings, and they were still waiting to see it. While few expect it to happen, levelling up could go some way to delivering what they voted for

A garage worker at half time at the Stoke City football game summed up the collective mood. A long time Labour voter, he explained that he voted for Brexit in 2016 and then the Conservatives in 2019 because they said they would deliver it. The former he would repeat but given he had yet to see things get better, he wasn’t so sure about the latter.

“I always used to vote Labour but now I just can’t trust them. I voted for Brexit in 2016, I would vote that again, I’m not sure I’d vote Conservative again.”