Waterside Needs Major Capital Investment and Equality of Opportunity

Many calls have been made over the last three years for a major investment package to be made in order to develop the Spencer Road area of the Waterside. More recently the Local development office has again advertised for tenders from those interested in developing the Distillery Brae site in particular. PULSE has been examining the background to the social and economic deprivation from which the Waterside is affected and which some agencies refuse to recognise. Derry City Council in particular has ignored recent reports from agencies such as NIVT's recently published "Mapping areas of Weak Community Infrastructure."

Summary of Need

Need is considered from two perspectives:

The extent to which deprivation in the area impacts on the need for services to be provided locally.
The demand for physical redevelopment of the built environment.

An assessment of deprivation shows that the Waterside has a number of substantially deprived council wards, the worst of which, Victoria, ranks within the 20 most deprived wards in Northern Ireland. To make matters worse is the general decline of the Waterside area, and the fact that many of the services - both public and private - which people in the Waterside area need to access are located in the Cityside. Increasingly, the Cityside is perceived as Nationalist and inaccessible to the Protestant population of the Waterside area.

Londonderry is widely perceived as a city divided both by a river and by how the populations on each side of it describe the city. The river forms a real, and perceived barrier between the largely Protestant Waterside and the predominantly Catholic Cityside. Due to sectarian violence and fear of violence, population movement has led to the polarisation of the city. With the exception of the small Fountain area, the population of the Cityside is Catholic, and the majority of large retail outlets, public sector buildings and service providers are located on the Cityside.

While there has been significant redevelopment of the city centre in terms of retail and office accommodation, this has not happened on the Waterside. In fact the Spencer Road area, while part of the City Centre, has declined as a retail area, with a number of development sites and vacant properties available. It is probable that these divisions are not evident to those who do not live in the city. However, to many living in the Waterside area, this means that access to services and shops is difficult and carries a degree of real or perceived threat. This situation has prompted a number of agencies to look at proposals for the redevelopment of Duke Street/Spencer Road with the aim of providing quality retail and office accommodation.

The Waterside Area

The Waterside area, as defined by Derry City Council boundaries, includes the wards of Enagh, Caw, Faughan, Altnagelvin, Lisnagelvin, Ebrington, Clondermott, Victoria Enagh and Newbuildings.

The most deprived wards in the Waterside are Victoria, Ebrington, Enagh and Caw. While it has been argued that the Waterside does not appear particularly disadvantaged with exception of Victoria and Enagh, in practice the overall ward figures hide pockets of sever deprivation. Perhaps the proximity of affluence and deprivation emphasises the differences, with Altnagelvin ward being among the 30 least deprived wards in Northern Ireland and Victoria within the 20 most deprived - yet the both exist back to back. The following table as assessed by PPRU in their work during 1995 compares these with the Nobel Report findings of 2001. Interestingly in every case, the wards have become relatively more deprived using the Nobel report. The Victoria ward is within the 4% most deprived wards (18/566) in Northern Ireland. In terms of social environment, the Victoria ward ranks as the second worst in Northern Ireland.

Deprivation Ranking – PPRU And Nobel

Ward Degree Extent Intensity Nobel Multiple
Deprivation Ranking
Altnagelvin 554 - 537 439
Caw 339 - 224 88
Clondermott 285 - 337 117
Ebrington 347 - 339 151
Enagh 238 125 143 125
Lisnagelvin 412 - 497 275
Victoria 29 21 96 18

In preparing its strategy for the Londonderry Initiative, the Department of the Environment defined which disadvantaged wards and isolated disadvantaged enumeration districts it would specifically target. The only Waterside ward to be fully included within the strategy was Victoria.

However, Clondermott’s EU district 1305 was included, as was Corrody’s EU district 1306. Nine further severely deprived ED’S lie within walking distance of the other two, some within areas of comparative affluence. Two are within Enagh wards, one within Caw wards, four within Corrody and two within Faughan ward.

The Victoria ward is the worst, by virtually every measure, than the NI average. However, the levels of deprivation in the other wards are less apparent.

An overview of the key indicators proves that:

• Income is below average in five of the seven wards

• Five of the seven wards considered are worse than the NI average in terms of the number of households with children where there are unemployed or part-time employed adults.

• Health problems are very high in five out of the seven wards, suggesting the reliance on health and social care provision is likely to be greater than average.

• In four wards, education scores are worse than the NI average

• All seven wards are below average for the social environment index.

• Four wards, Caw, Clondermott, Enagh and Victoria, show higher levels of unemployment than the NI average.

Household Income

The DOE Londonderry resident’s survey, published in 1985, looked at household income in the four electoral districts, which make up Derry City Council area. This study showed that Waterside residents had, on average, higher levels of income than those on the Cityside. However, the proportion in the highest income category was substantially lower than North side or West side. When we compare households with an annual income of under £10,000 we discover that 44% reside in the Waterside and 68% in the Cityside. In 1995, when the average disposable income in NI was £276.85 per week, the Waterside average was £209.29. When we bear in mind that the Waterside has significantly higher proportions of high income families, it is clear that a very substantial number of people living in the area are among the most disadvantaged households in Northern Ireland.

Population

Approximately 30% of the population of Derry City Council as a whole lives in the Waterside area. The ten electoral wards covering the area have a population of 31,000. The Waterside is perceived as a Protestant area in contrast to the predominantly Catholic Cityside. The 1991 census suggests that approximately half of the population is Protestant, a little over a third Roman Catholic, and the remainder claimed to be either no religion or of another religion. Perhaps significantly, two of the inner wards which are closest to Spencer Road have a high proportion of one community or another, Victoria ward was 84%Roman Catholic at the 1991 census and Lisnagelvin was 79% Protestant. The religious profile of the area is probably more significant than in other areas as it plays a part in informing peoples attitudes to facilities and services and plays a part in determining whether these are accessible or not. As we shall consider in a later section it is the concentration of services and facilities in the Cityside, which limits their access (for either perceived or real reasons) to many Protestants living in the Waterside area.

Community Relations

While many efforts have been made to improve community relations in Londonderry, the river is still seen as a barrier to community movement. Increasingly the Cityside is not seen as somewhere that working class Protestants live and, with the exception of the Fountain area, the Cityside has become predominately Catholic.

Protestant Alienation

A wide community consultation exercise carried out for the Waterside area Partnership, in early 1998, examined, among other things, community relations in the area. Those consulted felt that community relations where at an all time low and that the Protestant/Unionist community felt excluded from parts of the city and district. The District Partnership/Derry City Council in recognising the polarisation felt by Unionist/Protestant areas of the city, conducted an extensive consultation within these areas. It showed that there was weaker community development infrastructure within these marginalized and alienated communities. The consultation was conducted as an exploration of why these areas where not applying for EU monies from the District Partnership within the Derry City Council area. Following this a recommendation was made to set up a special aid mechanism called the Shared City and District Initiative (Project), whose aim would be to provide direct accessible community development support to community groups and associations and to Women’s groups within Protestant areas so as to address the imbalance in EU spending in the area as a result of the Special Support Programme.

Many are cynical about community relation’s work and feel that much of it is self-justifying. There was a general view that the Waterside had missed out on opportunities for funding and development in comparison to the Cityside, where extensive political representation had attracted greater resources. As much of this expenditure appeared to be within the Cityside area, it is felt that many Protestants, especially the young, could not benefit from such investment. On the positive side, there was wide spread acceptance that the Protestant community had not worked collectively to address its own needs and that collective activity within the area needed to be improved. There was a general desire in the area to improve community relations, however it was thought that an improved community infrastructure within the waterside was needed before relationships with the Catholic/Nationalist community could be effectively addressed.

The signs of Protestant alienation and population shift are physically evident throughout Londonderry:
• It is estimated that 12,000 Protestants have moved from the Cityside to the Waterside, and elsewhere, since 1969.

• In recent times, four Protestant Churches in the Cityside have closed. These are Great James Street Presbyterian, Claredon Street Reformed Presbyterian, Fountain Street Baptist and Claremont Presbyterian.

• Three Controlled Schools have amalgamated due to falling rolls. These include Carlisle Road (Presbyterian) Primary School, Cathedral (COI) Primary School and First Derry (Presbyterian) Primary School.

• The recent announcement that Templemore Secondary school is to close, and that Foyle and Londonderry Collage is thinking of relocating to the Waterside, is further evidence that Protestants have turned their backs on the Cityside.

• The proposed merger of Clondermott High School and Faughan Valley High School indicates that even in the Waterside the Protestant population is in significant decline.

• A number of police families have had to move from the Cityside due to attacks on homes. This movement has been mirrored with the movement of families from the Waterside to Limavady. Security force members have been attacked in commercial premises and educational establishments in the Cityside.

• School children wearing uniforms of state controlled schools have been intimidated and physically attacked in the city centre.

• Many Protestants have been reluctant to use Cityside crown buildings for social fund applications and unemployment issues, as a result this led to DHSS relocating to a new purpose build facility, at Lisnagelvin, in the Waterside.

• A recent study on retailing (Retailing in Londonderry – Ostick and Williams –1998) noted that 35% of local people were shopping elsewhere rather than using the Cityside.

Home Ownership

While we have already considered deprivation in earlier sections, one further measure of affluence can sometimes be shown through levels of home ownership. The Waterside has approximately 60% owner-occupier residents, which is approximately 1.2 times the Derry City Council average. In practice however, both are significantly lower than the NI average of 66%. Levels of home ownership throughout the Waterside area vary considerably with home ownership levels being highest in the comparatively affluent wards and substantially lower in wards such as Victoria, Caw and Corrody, which have high levels of public sector housing.

There are very wide ranges of other statistical evidence, which prove social need within the Derry City Council area. Unfortunately many of these do not consider the Waterside as a separate entity, therefore is difficult to draw exact conclusions.

• Discussions with the RUC suggest that crime levels are comparable to those throughout the council area. Whilst these are thought to be a matter of concern, especially in relation to young people, they where not thought to be significantly different from other similar Urban areas.

• The number of lone parents was also unavailable, however discussions with various advisory groups indicated that the spread of lone parents across the city council area was thought to be fairly even. The District Council area has the second highest percentage of single parents of any district council area within NI at 6.8%, which indicates that there is need for substantial support to this group.

Conclusion

As already indicated, the Waterside area combines some pockets of severe disadvantage with some comparatively affluent wards. For many Waterside residents, the Cityside is not particularly accessible, yet it is where much of the investment has been targeted over the past thirty years.

Recent investment in the Waterside, while welcome, only shifts the focus from the retail heart of the Waterside (Spencer Road/Lisnagelvin) to the outer ring of the URBAN area, this confirms the view that the Waterside is a place apart from the city’s central core where many services are based. This increased investment however has the potential to enhance employment prospects for the residents of the Waterside, if great care is taken to ensure that the most deprived areas are targeted when recruiting for new companies or businesses. The proposed plan for an additional 1,000 homes at Crescent Link and an additional 780 at Drumahoe make no account for the additional demand for access to social, economic or recreational facilities. By improving these services, which build self-confidence, self-esteem and increase educational skills, government bodies, voluntary groups and private business will be fulfilling an obligation under Section 75 of the Belfast Agreement.

Section 75 of the Agreement places an obligation on public bodies to ensure that public services are accessible to everyone on an equal basis. Currently, most investment in the city centre in Londonderry has benefited the Cityside, which is less accessible to the Protestant population in the city. Clearly, access to services is inequitable and needs to be addressed.

Government agencies, political representatives and funding bodies have the potential to contribute to the regeneration of the Waterside and it could be argued that they have a responsibility to ensure equity of access to services and resources.