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For years, the Billybanks council estate was left to crumble on its perch overlooking Cardiff ’s tidal, industrial, often mud-filled docklands.

What still rankles for many who lived there is that the authorities only seemed to take an interest when that view was transformed by Cardiff Bay barrage.

The story of the Billybanks, a once-pioneering ’60s housing scheme that became a by-word for urban deprivation, captures how the 21st century development frenzy has squeezed out those who don't have the assets to enjoy it.

Today that view has been transformed into one of Wales' best-known urban landscapes, encompassing the mushrooming high-rise blocks of Cardiff, the glimmering waters of the Bay and the landmark buildings that border it.

In turn, the Billybanks has been redeveloped into the middle-class flats and housing development known as Penarth Heights, and its previous residents scattered to the winds.

There is no blue plaque for the Billybanks, but its story is worth telling.

By the time the bulldozers started work in 2010, the decades had not been kind to the Billybanks.

Unmaintained, vandalised and with many of the flats left derelict, the once-award-winning 1960s estate was seen as an eyesore and a magnet for crime and squatters.

(Image: patrick@tallandshort.co.uk)

Yet it had not always been like this.

In its early decades, the Billybanks was described as the “heart and soul” of its town. It was a happy, thriving community. Residents remember a sense of community and of pride.

Father-of-two Vilis Kuksa and his family were one of the first to move into the Billybanks in July 1968.

He vividly remembers walking up High View Road for the first time.

“I was 13. We had just moved from Grangetown and I remember it being nice, new and modern - shiny.

“We moved into a three-bed maisonette, my mum, dad and I. As I walked down the road I thought how lovely it was. My family were delighted.

“It was a friendly community and at the time, people used to stand outside and talk and meet up. It was a very close and warm feeling among everybody - a feeling that you could be yourself and not worry.”

Veronica Burt grew up in a home close to the Billybanks and still lives there. She recalls a feeling of community around the estate.

“There would be lots of things happening - including jazz bands practicing on the rec and street parties,” the 48-year-old said.

Another resident, speaking in 2012, said: "I was brought up in Penarth and remember how the Billybanks used to be when I was a kid. It was a real community, full of life and excitement."

The Billybanks had been built to the high Parker Morris standards of the 1960s, winning a prestigious architecture award in the process. It provided more than 300 homes for up to 1,000 people.

The question that still hangs over its memory is whether that community could have been preserved with some investment for renovation. What is indisputable is that the investment never came and that the spiral of decline of the Billybanks coincided with the huge sums poured into the old Cardiff docklands, just across the water.

Towards the end of the 1980s, the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation was tasked with regenerating the area as part of a UK Government plan to improve poor areas of cities. The Cardiff Bay Barrage, and the subsequent transformation of the surrounding area, was the result.

(Image: Rob Browne)

Vilis is now 62. His father was a Latvian merchant seaman and mother worked at a Penarth shop.

He cannot remember exactly when the estate got a bad name, but he first truly realised its reputation when going for a job interview years later.

"I told the interviewers, they looked at each other and said ‘oh, Alcatraz’. It’s what people used to refer to it as, and I think it was a fair description.”

With more money being pumped into the docklands than anywhere else in Wales, the degrading Billybanks began to become a problem.

(Image: Richard Swingler)

Veronica Burt believes problems began in the 1980s, around the same time the docks were being redeveloped, when anti-social behaviour wardens employed on the estate were made redundant.

“There was a change when people with social issues started to come and move in. In the 1980s, we experienced anti-social behaviour. The washing got nicked off the line occasionally, kids used to come into the back garden and trespass, or you would get up and find your wing mirror is gone.”

The end for the Billybanks came after the turn of the Millennium. By then, it had become a partly-derelict hotbed of crime and often was occupied by travellers. Seen as a longstanding blight on the coastline of Penarth, it was named as one of the UK’s worst eyesores.

In 2002, a plan for regeneration was approved by Vale of Glamorgan council . After a long delay, an application for demolition of the estate was passed in 2007 to make way for the new Penarth Heights development.

Tenants were to be dispersed around the Vale of Glamorgan for their homes to make way for luxury apartments - the kind they would never be able to afford. People who had only ever known life on the estate were given eviction notices and quickly moved around the county borough to make way for the “luxury Art Deco flats” complete with “breathtaking” views.

(Image: Vilis Kuksa)

In August 2008, the South Wales Echo spoke to the residents who faced having to leave.

One, a 40-year-old father of two who lived in a three-bed maisonette, said he didn't want to leave Penarth.

He said: "My children, aged 10 and 14, are settled in Penarth and I don’t want to move out of the town. I have been offered £120,000. There is just no similar property in Penarth on sale at that kind of price.”

He added: “They are looking at it as a property in a ghetto, but it is they who have let it run down. I have lived here for 18 years and I like living here. I have found no problem with security. The majority of people who left were tenants – very few were homeowners.

“I am a homeowner and so am in a different stage of negotiations.”

Another resident said: “I have been told to get out, but until I get a satisfactory offer I am staying put.”

(Image: Richard Swingler)

The process of moving the last residents ultimately took years.

Redevelopment did not begin until 2010 and continued for several years. In 2011, the first five-bedroom show home opened and the development, led by builders Crest Nicholson, was underway with a promise of providing 20% affordable housing. It’s due for full completion next year.

(Image: Western Mail Archive) (Image: Western Mail Archive)

Anthony Slaughter, a Penarth-based Green Party campaigner and spokesman, believes that the root cause of the Billybanks being starved of investment was the desire to redevelop it.

He said: “The real driver of the Billybanks being demolished was Cardiff Bay. Once those plans were in place this area of Penarth became a prime piece of real estate. You can see the economic reason for it to be developed.

“It should have been an example of what we ought to be doing with council estates - improving and increasing the capacity of housing for everyone, only we have had this pattern of demolishing them to build luxury apartments in the name of regeneration that not many people can afford.

“The Billybanks is therefore an example of how the housing crisis has come about. It was a case of being very unfair to those lower down the social ladder.

“As usual, they were missing out, while all of this money was being put into Cardiff Bay.”

Anthony moved to the area in 2004, before plans to demolish the estate had been formalised.

He added: “It’s about the process of how it was done. Anyone who could have been evicted easily was evicted, and others were driven out by neglect - left to hang on until the very end.

“People were evicted at very short notice and not treated in a decent way - they were treated like an obstacle. It was completely wrong.

“We have got to stop seeing homes as purely financial assets. A home is a human right and the most important part of a someone’s life. We should do everything in our power to protect people in their homes and preserve them.”

Anthony, who himself lived on a council estate in Hackney, London, for 10 years, said these areas generate a “real sense of community and inclusivity”.

“These communities were also support networks. People relied on each other and trust was built between families.

“It might have been that you relied on your neighbour to look after your child once a week, or knowing that if you got locked out, someone would have a spare key you could use.

“We all rely on these networks without really realising they are there. To be moved miles and miles away where you don’t know anyone - it has both physical and mental health implications.

“At the Billybanks, like all council estates, there were older people too. The thought of having to move from a place that has always been their home was terrifying to these people.

“It destroyed people’s sense of who they were and made life incredibly impractical. Damaging on so many levels.”

The move to demolish the Billybanks was also spurred by the negative perception of council estates in British culture.

(Image: Richard Swingler)

“A couple of generations of politicians don’t really understand the importance of social housing,” Mr Slaughter said.

“Many people will think ‘it looks like a slum to me’, but they don’t realise that’s someone’s home.

“Home is who we are. And by doing this we are stacking up further economic problems meaning the housing crisis is only going to get even worse.”

He added: “We are destroying communities and it’s all being done through managed negligence. A lot of these estates, like the Billybanks, were award-winning when they were built in the 1960s, so why were they allowed to get run down like this?

“These problems could have been fixed. The council allowed it to deteriorate, but while they have some responsibility, we are also going through a period of local authorities being starved of funding.”

Max Wallis of Friends of the Earth Cymru campaigned with residents of the Billybanks and helped the last to leave get favourable new homes.

He explained: “In the 1990s the Billybanks was being used as a dumping ground or dump estate for unwanted and problem council tenants who had been refused other accommodation.

“The problem had just built up instead of being managed.

“It was a problem for the council, so the motivation was to make a lot of money on the development side - to get the highest price they could for the land.

“The houses could have been renovated, they had the potential but they would never consider that - they wanted to demolish and sell the site off.”

He said people living on the estate were then dispersed and made to move on to cheaper areas of the Vale of Glamorgan like Barry, Llantwit Major, St Athan and Dinas Powys.

“There were lots of people to deal with which also meant setting back other people on the waiting list. It meant friends being separated and communities being split.

“That was very difficult for them seeing as they had been there for so long. It was very unsatisfactory.”

But while communities were split up, Max said many people moving from the estate were happy to see the problem resolved, as were many residents living around the area.

“People thought they were going to have to go sooner or later and they didn’t want to get left in a half empty estate so moved eventually as offers were made to them,” he said.

The estate was 'no longer fit for purpose'

A spokesman for the Vale council said by the late 1990s the estate was “simply no longer fit for purpose”, adding that there were flaws in the design and maintenance costs were huge with new tenants reluctant to move in.

“After taking the decision to redevelop the site Vale of Glamorgan Council made arrangements for all residents to be moved to other properties in the area,” the spokesman said.

“Although there were over 300 properties on the estate only around two thirds of these were occupied at the time.

(Image: Rob Browne)

“The process still, however, took many years. This is in part because tenants were given a choice on where to move, rather than simply being placed in available properties.”

Most wished to stay in the town so the council worked closely with housing associations to increase the number of social housing properties, meaning buying properties on the open market and building new homes.

“Those living on the site were then given priority status – in effect a ‘first refusal’ - under the council’s social housing allocation policy,” the council spokesman said.

“All residents, who wished to return to the redeveloped site were also offered a guarantee that they would be considered for the available social housing which was to be built at Penarth Heights.

“Throughout the process the council worked closely with the Harbour View and Royal Close residents’ association, registered social landlords and Crest Nicholson to ensure the transition was as smooth as possible.”

But what of the new development?

(Image: Rob Browne)

Vilis Kuksa said building Penarth Heights was a “no-brainer”.

“When I first saw it was changing, it really seemed a simple decision,” he said.

“The Billybanks’ days were numbered as they would want to get better prices for property in that area. The view that had previously been oil tanks, industry and mud flats was now stunning - a brand new, glimmering Cardiff Bay.

“The older flats were unsightly. It’s partly what I expected but I must admit I thought the flats themselves might be a little more upmarket.

(Image: Rob Browne)

“Having said that, I would consider moving back, but only if I won the lottery. I wouldn’t spend that much on them otherwise.”

Others are concerned.

Veronica Burt said: “I’m surprised at the new development.

“I remember seeing the original plans and liking them, but don’t know how what was planned looks like what it is now.

“I feel a wonderful opportunity has been missed. The land and the views and the area had such potential and I don’t think it has realised that potential.

“I think they’ve just gone for ‘build as many houses as you possibly can and get as much money as you possibly can’.

(Image: Rob Browne)

“Some of them are ugly and not sympathetic. Some of the houses seem to be quite dark inside.

“I really do feel these could end up turning into Billybanks part two.”

She said there was “nothing attractive” about Penarth Heights, adding: “People said the Billybanks were ugly but for what they were they were actually quite spacious maisonnettes. I just think a wonderful opportunity was missed - I see it and I feel sick. It seems like rape of a fair land.”

(Image: Rob Browne)

A spokeswoman for Crest Nicholson said: “In 2004, Vale of Glamorgan Council invited bids for a flagship economic regeneration project in Penarth to replace the Billybanks housing estate.

“Our winning design bid is due for completion by early 2018, and comprises 377 homes responding to the site’s unique topography.

“Throughout the project we have involved the local community through consultation workshops with stakeholders, meetings and public exhibitions.”