The City Council wanted to press on with plans to demolish Madryn Street along with many more homes but following the Housing Minister’s intervention the Council has been allocated additional funds to refurbish the houses in the street. The Housing Market Renewal initiative was eventually wound up in 2010 by the incoming coalition Government. The Housing Market Renewal initiative was set up to demolish areas of declining and unpopular housing and build new modern homes in better neighbourhoods in many towns across the north of England including Liverpool and Wirral. There are still some residents living in the streets as they are still fighting for their homes to be saved and refurbished and others who are waiting to be re-housed in new homes. However the wider public enquiry is still to report back on the wider plans for the area and walking down the streets you can see rows of tinned-up houses in most of the Welsh Streets with some houses leaning precariously as the chimneys roofs and brickwork bulge out with green shoots sprouting out of the walls and gutters. The Housing Minister was responding to calls from many Beatle fans across the world who wanted to see Ringo’s house saved for posterity. About 32 properties including 9 Madryn Street will now be refurbished and put on the market. The house is one of 16 on the street to be spared, although 400 other homes in the wider area will be pulled down. In June 2014 it was announced that Ringo’s former home had been saved from demolition following the intervention of the Government’s Housing Minister. But in September 2013 the plans for the area were put on hold after the Government’s Communities Secretary Eric Pickles called for a public inquiry to consider the planning application. 9 Madryn Street was set to be knocked down as part of the City Council’s plans. In the summer of 2013 the City Council approved a £15m regeneration plan for the Welsh Streets with a plan to build more than 150 new homes, demolish up to 440 homes and refurbish 37 houses. The long running row between local residents who want to save the streets and those who want the streets demolished to make way for new homes has an added twist in Madryn Street where there is a further balance between the need for decent modern homes and protecting a piece of the Beatles’ heritage in their home town. Ringo’s childhood home remains boarded up and covered in graffiti left by Beatles fans from across the world. As I was taking photos a yellow ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ bus drives by the end of the street and stops for tourists to have a peak down the road in the rain. The nearly abandoned streets are eerily quiet apart from the passing taxis taking Beatles fans to 9 Madryn Street. The properties are called the Welsh Streets as they were built and lived in by Welsh workers in the late 19th Century and named after Welsh towns, villages and valleys and include Rhiwlas Street, Powis Street, Madryn Street, Kinmel Street and Gwydir Street which adjoin South Street close to Princes Park.ĩ Madryn Street holds special significance for Beatles fans as it was the birthplace of Ringo Starr when he was known as plain old Richard Starkey. The debate has had the City Council, its partners and some residents on one side saying the houses should be demolished and the land developed, and some local residents and heritage campaigners on the other claiming the Victorian terraces should be restored to their former glory. A debate on what should become of the eleven ‘Welsh streets’ has raged for eight years following the declaration of a renewal area under the then Labour Government’s Housing Market Renewal initiative. I visited the ‘Welsh Streets’ district in Dingle on the outskirts of Liverpool city centre on yet another wet and rainy day.
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