A RUNDOWN housing estate in Warsop is to be ‘blitzed’ by Mansfield District Council as part of plans to improve the area.
The move comes after the council spent £500,000 on buying five crumbling homes on the Mount Pleasant estate last year, before gutting and renovating them.
The properties on Fenwick Street, Vickers Street and Watson Street are now on the market.
But the council is to launch a survey into the state of other properties in the area to calculate what work is required.
Speaking to residents at a meeting on Thursday evening at Warsop’s St Teresa’s Church, the council promised to ‘bring the houses up to standard’ including those under the ownership of private landlords and housing associations. Where work is essential, they have vowed to force them to pay for repairs.
Coun Derek Evans, who sits on Warsop Parish Council and is portfolio holder for housing strategy and regeneration at the district council, said: “The idea of the council is to work with the tenants and improve the general quality of the area.
“It should be an area where people can come together and live. There has been a lot of anti-social behaviour and problems with drugs but we are working to resolve these issues.
“The next stage is to blitz the area and do this survey.”
Tenants and landlords at Thursday’s meeting raised concerns over the money spent on the five renovated homes, money procured from the Meden Valley Making Places regeneration project.
There are fears that the prices of the homes, on the market for £79,000 each, will deter buyers with other homes on the same streets priced much lower.
But Coun Evans said: “If they’d been left to deteriorate, houses either side would have been affected.
“If we can’t sell them, we will look at co-ownership or a renting scheme.”
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