I agree with you I have been looking at videos of the 5 towns and it makes me sad to see how much of this great city has been neglected by Stoke-on-Trent city council, what a shame all that history is being lost.
As a guy who works for a council, councillors get back handers to give contracts out to there mates for useless endeavours such as your paving, so they do get something out of those useless projects,
Fantastic hope it gets to those council idiots they have ruined our city its so very sad the government ought to make them accountable for where this money is spent and to report the investment and what its used for well done my friend ❤❤❤❤❤❤
I couldn't have put this any better myself, you are spot on. I am from Stoke, I have moved around the world for many years but now I want to come back to my roots & live in Staoke-on-Trent. I was going to open up a business in Hanley but forget it: the council has zero idea of how to promote & grow businesses in the towns.
Problem with Stoke is that the council believe we're a big city, and our residents believe that the past is the future. High streets, as a whole, are dead. Shops are pointless, you can buy anything faster and cheaper online without having to spend money on travelling to get there. You need to give people amenities, an excuse to visit the town centre, all of this space could be used for fun things.. Investing in the future, BUILD US SOMETHING TO BECOME. You want us to be a hub for finance? Build us a framework for our future to become it. Want us to be a sporting hub? Build us a framework to progress the youth into differing sporting fields. Want us to become a tourist destination? We have a heritage but we have NO PROGRESSIONAL CULTURE, you can not just offer the past, and become the present of everywhere else. Everywhere else does it better. DIFFER US from others.
Makes me so sad to see the potential and bad decisions made with the city’s finances. Thanks for this video and highlighting not only the issue but the potential xxx
I lived in SOT for almost 15yrs although originally from down south.. I loved it there! I left part of my favourite bit of my life there.. beautiful place, beautiful people ❤
Very well presented video. Council in this area making countless poor decisions and missing potential you’ve described. And don’t get me started in the road network and congestion !!
Honestly fully agree! Stoke used to be amazing and I was once proud to say I lived in Stoke now I'm embarrassed to say I'm from Stoke. Conservative council did not listen to the people of this city and instead continued to allow this city die.
Sad to see my hometown like this and how thriving it was when i was groiwng up in the 90s , its been in decline for sometime now but worse than ever now people wont come at all soon and the ladt few shops will be gone
I recently went shopping in Hanley to buy a pair of training shoes. I could of purchased online, but fancied a more genuine, hands on adventure. I recieved a parking fine & the excuse was the road markings had worn off, to say it was a loading area. The 3 hour round trip & shoes, cost a total of £160. Online it is from now. I see at least a dozen parking wardens, all on commissions per victim. To even leave home for random stuff, adds up to rediculous costs. Greed has become a major factor in all society. I often think of how I would fix this world & the only solution is to get rich & not worry about the cost. Simples! 😂
Was that near the main traffic lights at the top of Limekiln bank, on the end of the row where Argos and the old bus station was? My father-in-law got done there, as the "loading bay" markings had worn off.
I applaud this guy for telling the truth .Our council waste money irrelevant rubbish .ie : Big flat back dogs outside the old registry office in Hanley .WHAT A WASTE of money .What's the point of things like .The council are don't care about encourage investment in our city ,or anything important .
Landlords won’t lower the rents as that ultimately decreases the value of the property. The council just needs to give them a simple choice, invest and do it up or it will be compulsory purchased. I’d personally support mass compulsory purchase of these buildings. Buy them up, spend the money on them, turn the upper floors into nice flats, lower business rates and have a scheme where people can apply to take over units. Offer business courses to those taking over the units. Things like doing the books, tax just small basic things that business owners need to know (many don’t). Give them the confidence to take the punt, no business rates for the first year or two with constant support. People would no doubt moan that millions is being spent on buying up property but I’d rather that then 17 million being spent on a car park. They need to go to some decent leisure business’s that have a presence is other cities. Offer them units to take over. We have thousands of students in this city and they have no where to go, they all walk over to the train station and go to Manchester or Birmingham. Why don’t we have a Roxy ballroom, sixes, flight club or even a Ghetto Golf. Student money is being allowed to leave the city because there is no longer a nighttime economy in the city centre. Very little bars or late night clubs, no choice. We also need more high density flats in the city centre itself. I’m all for new investments, new projects but grass roots is where it should start. The council also need to sort out public transport, because until that’s fixed it makes travelling for many untenable.
I completely agree. If the buildings were purchased and the upstairs levels turned into accommodation or offices, then this would give the building an income. Which in turn means that the rent and rates for the business/shop that could use the ground level would not have to be as high, which in turn would mean it would not be as much of a risk for them to take a lease.
Landlords or rates? Some of those buildings are being let out for far less than the rates paid! But who wants a business when there is no footfall? Rates kill business not rents. Rents in Hanley have been lower than anywhere in the uk because the footfall has declined so much. Locals prefer to spend their money in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool. Who can blame them I guess.
Sounds like a statement written by Hitler or Stalin. Seize their assets! How about the council clean up the drug infested sh@t hole? As a businessman myself I would not invest a penny in Hanley after seeing it in June for the first time in years. It wasn't the thriving Hanley I knew 20 plus years ago it was scary to know Zombies are real.
Council mentality - Shops close, so council gets less in business rates, so council puts the rates up for the rest of the businesses and so they then close down and so on. Drop the business rates, get the businesses into the centre and the council income will increase. Unfortunately, in the old days the councillors would be the smart people in the population and so they would have an idea about where they are going. These days the people who run for council are more concerned about their person image and their pockets and have actually have no idea of how to run a business.
Great presentation, well done. I agree with you but I think the bigger picture is that the Corporations and Govt are in cahoots in running towns into the ground to force people to the retail parks and huge supermarkets (and Amazon). Its part of the UN's covert 'deindustrialising' policy, quite Orwellian really. It annoys me when people say it's a 'S*** Hole' as though there is something intrinsically bad about it and its people when It's a result of council/govt policy. Also running the place down pushes housing rent down and allows the govt to 'dump' immigrants in the area at lower cost than London which only serves to increase the ghettoised areas. If you watch abandoned/Ghost Town videos from the US I fear that this is the long term plan for S-o-T/Hanley not regeneration.
Firstly - No city can survive with 6 town centres. Choose 1, invest in it. Your ask isnt reasonable. No other thriving city has several ‘centres’. 2. It needs jobs - centres of technology and head officew - so people need to live there/want to live there. Young people - the next generation - who will spend and invest over time. Look forward not back to “the good old days”. They’ve gone And stoke is my home town! I want it to thrive
No, I agree, there shouldn't be 6 city centres, there should be 6 towns, with 6 town councils, instead of one city council, because it clearly isn't working. 6 towns, 6 councils, 6 pots of money to care for them and their individual needs. And I don't hanker for the old days, I'm only 35, but I do think out history and heritage should be saved and shared and incorporated into our new, not demolished and replaced.
@@TheRedHairedStokiespot on unless Stoke On Trent names them greater Stoke, like Manchester or greater Manchester. But yes Stoke On Trent needs to be redesigned as one big city centre not name Hanley but Stoke.
I recently discovered your channel. I was born in Stoke but relocated to Cornwall thirty years ago. Unfortunately what you are showing in your videos is happening in Cornwall. As you say, greed is behind the decline in all of the towns across the country.
I remember a beautiful Victorian city which over the decades the Council has destroyed. These old buildings should have been cleaned & repurposed. The old General Market was destroyed for some hideous shopping mall. The Council want to make a mini Manchester or Brum. Stoke has six towns not one city centre. The Council worked against the natural order of our lives. Know it alls. Hideous new bus station in wrong location. All metal like a urinal. Expensive car parks. Why go to Hanley, just cheap shops and strangers to the area sitting, strolling about staring? Unpleasant atmosphere. And my memories shattered. Ugliness everywhere.
I haven't been to Hanley in years. Last time I was heading that way regularly I was surprised to see they had pedestrianised the town. I was only going that way for a few months. So next time I go it will be gone. Wow.
Typical council, I agree with what you say, empty building don’t make money for no one, the businesses should be charged rates on what they make each year, that’s fair for every business, big or small, the hotels and car park were strategically situated to suit the new council offices, the Smithfield car park will be used by visitors to the council and council staff, nothing to help the people of SOT, some of the people at the council should be sacked.
I wouldn't trust our council to run a bath, let alone a city. Shocking to see your recent short on the state of Hanley's nightlife too. I used to DJ in a few of those venues in the 2000s, so sad to see it all dead and boarded up now. The finger of blame for the lack of nightlife has to be at least partly pointed at the police for that. Our police seem to actively despise any late night venue, making it next to impossible to get a late license, and equally hard to hold onto it. I've heard this from friends who have run venues in town. Take their stance on drugs for example - a bar in Hanley catches a punter with drugs on him, and they dutifully report it to the police. Rather than being thanked for helping to keep the streets safe, the venue gets a black mark in their record as being a "druggy venue" which then endangers their late license. Ridiculous.
just for starters, The grade 2 listed pot bank you mentioned could be turned into a working museum etc and there's so many buildings near the canals that could be turned into pubs/restaurants.
I live in the literally rotting town of longton you know the worst place to live in the uk (as voted by who?? Twice in a row. I hadn't been up Hanley (duck) for about 3 years till 4 weeks ago to buy myself a suit. One shop sold a few suits but not my size. I stood at the back of Mark's & sparks & just looked at what my city has become I was shocked!! I'd heard that shops were closing but I drove home & cried like a baby at what used to be & what we have now. People say things move on ect but nothing is improving! Nothing is getting better it just gets worse & worse. God help us cause nobody else will.
More investment is needed in Stoke and not just for shops but also to encourage others to come here to learn about Stoke on Trent's past our transport system is in my opinion the worst in the country if we want to complete with cities like Birmingham/Manchester/Leeds and Sheffield then more money needs to be spent on improving local services
The problem Stoke has changed and it should be 4 towns not six anymore and the 2 towns demoted expanded to Hanley, also Hanley needs to changed to Stoke On Trent to get the correct meaning with the correct facilities trains station football club arena and definitely better shops
They have done this In Grimsby, Not just Hanley stoke. Peopel fell over becasue they could not distinguish Pavment from the roads. Many needed Hospital treatment, they then had to Pull it all up and replace it. Now they are doing it agian a few years after, to replace a Bus Station they moved to put down these awfull pavments. It seams that there is a company who are dong this , I wounder if any MPs are GCOs. Or is SERCO INVOLVED.
We still have FOUR Tory MPs wanting to reopen the Stoke Leek railway line for a passenger service, a service which would see very little use after an in initial enthusiasm. Only for rail enthusiasts but would cost many £millions. The council could either make ALL car parking free or make out of town shopping centres charge for parking to make it an even playing field at least for the city centre shops.
We are the forgotten people the sad thing is Stoke people are so friendly but the money is not given to us smack bang in the middle of Nottingham Birmingham Liverpool Manchester there city centres do get the money and help so why not us thank you so much for doing this video
You talk alot of common sense,,,our council of s,o,t is an utter utter waste of time, they must walk around with their eyes shut tight,,i never go to Hanley what so ever any more, i go to Nantwich and ludlow leominster church stretton ect and spend my hard earned money in places where I feel safe and are pretty and pleasing to the eye and actually have shops that are open,,, Newcastle under Lyme is not far behind Hanley now thats going down the pan along with most of the 5 towns unfortunately, thanks for you vlog love it,❤❤❤
The reason they want to keep these buildings empty is because the longer they are left thee more money can be made from people who are willing to buy them and the suppliers they are getting the materials to possibly restore these building
I think a big problem is Manchester n Birmingham is a 10 quid hour long train and you’ve got everything there, we all hate stoke and do the first thing to get out of it when we can it’s gonna take a miracle to get the place back on track. I’m 22 and have seen to many shops, small businesses and clubs shut over the years. The nightlife is shit now; fiction is spike centre, the mill is completely empty and gossip n pink have no atmosphere when there is even a crowd in there, not to mention all those that have closed down. I’ve seen an improvement in castle with places opening and being done up there, almost as if they’re trying to make it appeal to students, people coming to staffs n Keele uni but it needs to be done on a much larger scale, a lot faster than is has been done
Stafford is just as bad! They are wasting money replacing the block paving there too. The shopping centre is empty with no sign of renovation. There are buildings that have been destroyed by squatters and just need tearing down. Is so sad to see town centres crumbling around us. The parking costs are astronomical in Stafford over £6 per day!! For what?! I got to the suburbs of Birmingham regularly, there they have 3 hours free parking and town centres are way busier!
Cut business rates to sensible levels (right now they are far more than the rents, and just as much if the building is empty) and bring the Loop Line back as a tram system.
The council of very good at spending the money now bankrupt.whst happened to the pavers they ripped up ????? thanks for your time and consideration 😉 duck
Detroit here we come. Unless the town is handed back to the people. The Council is supposed to serve the people. Multimillion pound car parks don't help. Reduce business rates, reduce red tape. Improve transport. Spend car park money on re-building a tram service
In 10 years time Hanley will just be a hideous mish mash of empty overgrown listed properties, car parks, charity shops/ pound shops and rotting empty businesses with To Let signs hanging over the door. I moved up to Leek in February so i'm lucky enough to not have to visit this dump anymore unless I need to go to the bank or catch a connection from the bus station.
Unfortunately there not gonna build there or even entertain any thought of doing anything with them you have the intu centre and all fezzy Park been developed for big multi national companies who will pay through the roof to rent a building etc so why do they need build Hanley they'd sooner see it rot same as Longton and then demolish it all and build new, as its already there motto spend little on new build or spend millions on redeveloping, me personally the church and the other heritage buildings that have a meaning for our great city should be top of list priority
Why doesn’t the council instead knocking buildings down is use them for homeless shelters for the homeless folk out there but they prefer to waste there money on things us folk do not want
Hanley is awful at the moment it’s like a dead town there compared to how it used to be we can put the joy back in stoke on trent and create a nice city center in this space with lots of history but the council don’t care anymore it’s like there just going to slowly let it keep getting worse
It’s a shame but it’s a dying town! Shopping parks & online shopping are why people aren’t going to Hanley ! It’s silly building car parks because parkings free on Festival Park. Or Wolstanton. Your right, these buildings need to be utalising. May be flats or business, warehouses where online shopping can be distributed!
because they can give thier friends money. its not stupidity, its not incompetence, they give out contracts to companies they have vested interest or shares in drain the swamp
Cheaper to go the Trafford centre on the train than park your car on that new car park. Why would anyone want to stay in that new hotel. 1 it is too far away from the centre of Hanley. 2 it is bang in the middle of Tesco and that 5 metre beach 😂😂
Online shopping has killed town shops. I'm not suprised though. e.g. I wanted some Asics trainers recently. Went to the Sports Direct shop in Longton, hardly a pair in there. Went to Sports Direct online, and they had hundreds. Delivered next day. It's like they don't even want their shops to succeed. Add to this the closure of the Pot Banks, the homelessness, the immigration and the monkey dust, you have 6 dead towns. All stemming from greed of some sort. The Pot Banks closed because the owners moved their business to the far east, where labout rates were a fraction of what the unions in Stoke had escalated the wages to. In the early 90s, I heard from a mate that a toilet sprayer on Chloride Shires was getting paid £600 a week. For spraying FFS! Meanwhile, we were doing engineering across the road for £200 to £300. Our work involved having gone to college, and an apprenticeship, and having to use your brain all day long. Spraying toilets did not, but it paid 2 to 3 times as much. No wonder the owners moved it abroad. The greed of the workers and the unions forced most of the people in all 6 towns, to be jobless. That's when the rot started to take over.
Also, carpark charges. Why would anyone want to pay to come into Hanley or Stoke, when you can park at Festival Site for free? Perhaps this was the plan all along. Let Hanley slowly deteriorate, and in the meantime, build up the Festival Site, and the Wolstanton Site, with massive, free carparks. Like leaving an old animal to starve to death. No intervention required. The council should be ashamed of themselves.
I agree with you I have been looking at videos of the 5 towns and it makes me sad to see how much of this great city has been neglected by Stoke-on-Trent city council, what a shame all that history is being lost.
As a guy who works for a council, councillors get back handers to give contracts out to there mates for useless endeavours such as your paving, so they do get something out of those useless projects,
Fantastic hope it gets to those council idiots they have ruined our city its so very sad the government ought to make them accountable for where this money is spent and to report the investment and what its used for well done my friend ❤❤❤❤❤❤
I couldn't have put this any better myself, you are spot on. I am from Stoke, I have moved around the world for many years but now I want to come back to my roots & live in Staoke-on-Trent. I was going to open up a business in Hanley but forget it: the council has zero idea of how to promote & grow businesses in the towns.
Excellent vision RHS. Yours is the voice that should be on the Council. This is this way to change for the People.
Thank you very much!
Problem with Stoke is that the council believe we're a big city, and our residents believe that the past is the future. High streets, as a whole, are dead. Shops are pointless, you can buy anything faster and cheaper online without having to spend money on travelling to get there. You need to give people amenities, an excuse to visit the town centre, all of this space could be used for fun things.. Investing in the future, BUILD US SOMETHING TO BECOME.
You want us to be a hub for finance? Build us a framework for our future to become it.
Want us to be a sporting hub? Build us a framework to progress the youth into differing sporting fields.
Want us to become a tourist destination? We have a heritage but we have NO PROGRESSIONAL CULTURE, you can not just offer the past, and become the present of everywhere else. Everywhere else does it better. DIFFER US from others.
Totally agree, they should get the absent Landlords to do somet with the empty buildings
Or f*ck the landlords, take the empty properties and put them to use.
100% true, I could not agree more . You are spot on here.
Very well said duck.
Makes me so sad to see the potential and bad decisions made with the city’s finances. Thanks for this video and highlighting not only the issue but the potential xxx
Your music to my ears, ive been saying this for years.
I lived in SOT for almost 15yrs although originally from down south.. I loved it there! I left part of my favourite bit of my life there.. beautiful place, beautiful people ❤
Very well presented video. Council in this area making countless poor decisions and missing potential you’ve described. And don’t get me started in the road network and congestion !!
Thank you! No, between the potholes and the traffic it's terrible to try and get anywhere
Honestly fully agree! Stoke used to be amazing and I was once proud to say I lived in Stoke now I'm embarrassed to say I'm from Stoke. Conservative council did not listen to the people of this city and instead continued to allow this city die.
Do you mean 50 years of Liebout council?
Sad to see my hometown like this and how thriving it was when i was groiwng up in the 90s , its been in decline for sometime now but worse than ever now people wont come at all soon and the ladt few shops will be gone
Well said
Thank you!
I recently went shopping in Hanley to buy a pair of training shoes. I could of purchased online, but fancied a more genuine, hands on adventure. I recieved a parking fine & the excuse was the road markings had worn off, to say it was a loading area. The 3 hour round trip & shoes, cost a total of £160. Online it is from now. I see at least a dozen parking wardens, all on commissions per victim. To even leave home for random stuff, adds up to rediculous costs. Greed has become a major factor in all society. I often think of how I would fix this world & the only solution is to get rich & not worry about the cost. Simples! 😂
Was that near the main traffic lights at the top of Limekiln bank, on the end of the row where Argos and the old bus station was?
My father-in-law got done there, as the "loading bay" markings had worn off.
I filmed up Hanley today and yesterday it’s sad to see so many businesses/ buildings shut, lost history in all the 6 towns I’ve visited
I applaud this guy for telling the truth .Our council waste money irrelevant rubbish .ie : Big flat back dogs outside the old registry office in Hanley .WHAT A WASTE of money .What's the point of things like .The council are don't care about encourage investment in our city ,or anything important .
Amazing video duck❤ completely agree
I couldn't agree more unfortunately the council around here is greedy
I was wondering what they were doing with that road, now I'm pissed 😡
Exactly..... Look after what we've got BEFORE building new.
The most sustainable building, is the one already built.
Landlords won’t lower the rents as that ultimately decreases the value of the property. The council just needs to give them a simple choice, invest and do it up or it will be compulsory purchased.
I’d personally support mass compulsory purchase of these buildings. Buy them up, spend the money on them, turn the upper floors into nice flats, lower business rates and have a scheme where people can apply to take over units.
Offer business courses to those taking over the units. Things like doing the books, tax just small basic things that business owners need to know (many don’t). Give them the confidence to take the punt, no business rates for the first year or two with constant support.
People would no doubt moan that millions is being spent on buying up property but I’d rather that then 17 million being spent on a car park.
They need to go to some decent leisure business’s that have a presence is other cities. Offer them units to take over. We have thousands of students in this city and they have no where to go, they all walk over to the train station and go to Manchester or Birmingham.
Why don’t we have a Roxy ballroom, sixes, flight club or even a Ghetto Golf. Student money is being allowed to leave the city because there is no longer a nighttime economy in the city centre. Very little bars or late night clubs, no choice.
We also need more high density flats in the city centre itself. I’m all for new investments, new projects but grass roots is where it should start. The council also need to sort out public transport, because until that’s fixed it makes travelling for many untenable.
I completely agree. If the buildings were purchased and the upstairs levels turned into accommodation or offices, then this would give the building an income. Which in turn means that the rent and rates for the business/shop that could use the ground level would not have to be as high, which in turn would mean it would not be as much of a risk for them to take a lease.
Landlords or rates? Some of those buildings are being let out for far less than the rates paid! But who wants a business when there is no footfall? Rates kill business not rents. Rents in Hanley have been lower than anywhere in the uk because the footfall has declined so much. Locals prefer to spend their money in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool. Who can blame them I guess.
@@TheRedHairedStokiewho wants to have offices in a town full of junkies.
Sounds like a statement written by Hitler or Stalin. Seize their assets! How about the council clean up the drug infested sh@t hole? As a businessman myself I would not invest a penny in Hanley after seeing it in June for the first time in years. It wasn't the thriving Hanley I knew 20 plus years ago it was scary to know Zombies are real.
Council mentality - Shops close, so council gets less in business rates, so council puts the rates up for the rest of the businesses and so they then close down and so on. Drop the business rates, get the businesses into the centre and the council income will increase. Unfortunately, in the old days the councillors would be the smart people in the population and so they would have an idea about where they are going. These days the people who run for council are more concerned about their person image and their pockets and have actually have no idea of how to run a business.
Great presentation, well done. I agree with you but I think the bigger picture is that the Corporations and Govt are in cahoots in running towns into the ground to force people to the retail parks and huge supermarkets (and Amazon). Its part of the UN's covert 'deindustrialising' policy, quite Orwellian really. It annoys me when people say it's a 'S*** Hole' as though there is something intrinsically bad about it and its people when It's a result of council/govt policy. Also running the place down pushes housing rent down and allows the govt to 'dump' immigrants in the area at lower cost than London which only serves to increase the ghettoised areas. If you watch abandoned/Ghost Town videos from the US I fear that this is the long term plan for S-o-T/Hanley not regeneration.
Firstly - No city can survive with 6 town centres. Choose 1, invest in it. Your ask isnt reasonable. No other thriving city has several ‘centres’.
2. It needs jobs - centres of technology and head officew - so people need to live there/want to live there. Young people - the next generation - who will spend and invest over time. Look forward not back to “the good old days”. They’ve gone
And stoke is my home town! I want it to thrive
No, I agree, there shouldn't be 6 city centres, there should be 6 towns, with 6 town councils, instead of one city council, because it clearly isn't working.
6 towns, 6 councils, 6 pots of money to care for them and their individual needs.
And I don't hanker for the old days, I'm only 35, but I do think out history and heritage should be saved and shared and incorporated into our new, not demolished and replaced.
@@TheRedHairedStokiespot on unless Stoke On Trent names them greater Stoke, like Manchester or greater Manchester. But yes Stoke On Trent needs to be redesigned as one big city centre not name Hanley but Stoke.
I recently discovered your channel. I was born in Stoke but relocated to Cornwall thirty years ago. Unfortunately what you are showing in your videos is happening in Cornwall. As you say, greed is behind the decline in all of the towns across the country.
I remember a beautiful Victorian city which over the decades the Council has destroyed. These old buildings should have been cleaned & repurposed. The old General Market was destroyed for some hideous shopping mall. The Council want to make a mini Manchester or Brum. Stoke has six towns not one city centre. The Council worked against the natural order of our lives. Know it alls. Hideous new bus station in wrong location. All metal like a urinal. Expensive car parks. Why go to Hanley, just cheap shops and strangers to the area sitting, strolling about staring? Unpleasant atmosphere. And my memories shattered. Ugliness everywhere.
I agree, architecture now is awful, I can't help but think that the bus station looks like a giant metal crab?
Amazing information. I love the haunted mood you've created with this video. What is the background music?
Majority of councils haven’t got a clue, they need people like you, but you have ideas and that’s a no no.
It truly breaks my heart when I go into Hanley. Ive just come back from Ross on wye the town reminded me of what Hanley used to be. What is going on.
Hopefully one day this once great city can be great again.
Only when you physically remove the council ✌
I haven't been to Hanley in years. Last time I was heading that way regularly I was surprised to see they had pedestrianised the town. I was only going that way for a few months. So next time I go it will be gone. Wow.
Stoke On Trent council/councillors needs to be seriously investigated due to the fact money as disappeared on things other than what it was meant for.
Typical council, I agree with what you say, empty building don’t make money for no one, the businesses should be charged rates on what they make each year, that’s fair for every business, big or small, the hotels and car park were strategically situated to suit the new council offices, the Smithfield car park will be used by visitors to the council and council staff, nothing to help the people of SOT, some of the people at the council should be sacked.
LLs sit on them and use as collateral for loans they use to speculate elsewhere.
You should look now.
. Arena cancelled by Labour.
I wouldn't trust our council to run a bath, let alone a city. Shocking to see your recent short on the state of Hanley's nightlife too. I used to DJ in a few of those venues in the 2000s, so sad to see it all dead and boarded up now. The finger of blame for the lack of nightlife has to be at least partly pointed at the police for that. Our police seem to actively despise any late night venue, making it next to impossible to get a late license, and equally hard to hold onto it. I've heard this from friends who have run venues in town. Take their stance on drugs for example - a bar in Hanley catches a punter with drugs on him, and they dutifully report it to the police. Rather than being thanked for helping to keep the streets safe, the venue gets a black mark in their record as being a "druggy venue" which then endangers their late license. Ridiculous.
Nice video 😊..
Could you please tell me which device you ate using to capture videos. Thank you
Hey, yes it's a Samsung 23 Ultra and a DJI Osmo 6 Gimbal :)
@@TheRedHairedStokie your videos are really good. Which settings are you using ??
The best thing to come out of Stoke
Is the M6
just for starters, The grade 2 listed pot bank you mentioned could be turned into a working museum etc and there's so many buildings near the canals that could be turned into pubs/restaurants.
Certainly enjoyed watching this video , Council are selfish, they Don't care about Hanley...
I live in the literally rotting town of longton you know the worst place to live in the uk (as voted by who?? Twice in a row. I hadn't been up Hanley (duck) for about 3 years till 4 weeks ago to buy myself a suit. One shop sold a few suits but not my size. I stood at the back of Mark's & sparks & just looked at what my city has become I was shocked!! I'd heard that shops were closing but I drove home & cried like a baby at what used to be & what we have now. People say things move on ect but nothing is improving! Nothing is getting better it just gets worse & worse. God help us cause nobody else will.
More investment is needed in Stoke and not just for shops but also to encourage others to come here to learn about Stoke on Trent's past our transport system is in my opinion the worst in the country if we want to complete with cities like Birmingham/Manchester/Leeds and Sheffield then more money needs to be spent on improving local services
The problem Stoke has changed and it should be 4 towns not six anymore and the 2 towns demoted expanded to Hanley, also Hanley needs to changed to Stoke On Trent to get the correct meaning with the correct facilities trains station football club arena and definitely better shops
Physically remove your council & ya may have a chance. For evil to flourish good people need to do nothing ✌
They have done this In Grimsby, Not just Hanley stoke. Peopel fell over becasue they could not distinguish Pavment from the roads. Many needed Hospital treatment, they then had to Pull it all up and replace it. Now they are doing it agian a few years after, to replace a Bus Station they moved to put down these awfull pavments. It seams that there is a company who are dong this , I wounder if any MPs are GCOs. Or is SERCO INVOLVED.
Got the biggest payout from the levelling up fund but seems to have gone to the wrong places
We still have FOUR Tory MPs wanting to reopen the Stoke Leek railway line for a passenger service, a service which would see very little use after an in initial enthusiasm. Only for rail enthusiasts but would cost many £millions. The council could either make ALL car parking free or make out of town shopping centres charge for parking to make it an even playing field at least for the city centre shops.
We get totally forgotten and last on the list if we're on the list at all. It's a disgrace!
We are the forgotten people the sad thing is Stoke people are so friendly but the money is not given to us smack bang in the middle of Nottingham Birmingham Liverpool Manchester there city centres do get the money and help so why not us thank you so much for doing this video
Theres a houseing crisis those empty shops should be utilised as homes to bring life back into Hanley .
Half a million people in Stoke-on-Trent??? Divide by 2.
You talk alot of common sense,,,our council of s,o,t is an utter utter waste of time, they must walk around with their eyes shut tight,,i never go to Hanley what so ever any more, i go to Nantwich and ludlow leominster church stretton ect and spend my hard earned money in places where I feel safe and are pretty and pleasing to the eye and actually have shops that are open,,, Newcastle under Lyme is not far behind Hanley now thats going down the pan along with most of the 5 towns unfortunately, thanks for you vlog love it,❤❤❤
The reason they want to keep these buildings empty is because the longer they are left thee more money can be made from people who are willing to buy them and the suppliers they are getting the materials to possibly restore these building
I think a big problem is Manchester n Birmingham is a 10 quid hour long train and you’ve got everything there, we all hate stoke and do the first thing to get out of it when we can it’s gonna take a miracle to get the place back on track. I’m 22 and have seen to many shops, small businesses and clubs shut over the years. The nightlife is shit now; fiction is spike centre, the mill is completely empty and gossip n pink have no atmosphere when there is even a crowd in there, not to mention all those that have closed down.
I’ve seen an improvement in castle with places opening and being done up there, almost as if they’re trying to make it appeal to students, people coming to staffs n Keele uni but it needs to be done on a much larger scale, a lot faster than is has been done
Stafford is just as bad! They are wasting money replacing the block paving there too. The shopping centre is empty with no sign of renovation. There are buildings that have been destroyed by squatters and just need tearing down. Is so sad to see town centres crumbling around us. The parking costs are astronomical in Stafford over £6 per day!! For what?! I got to the suburbs of Birmingham regularly, there they have 3 hours free parking and town centres are way busier!
Cut business rates to sensible levels (right now they are far more than the rents, and just as much if the building is empty) and bring the Loop Line back as a tram system.
The council of very good at spending the money now bankrupt.whst happened to the pavers they ripped up ????? thanks for your time and consideration 😉 duck
Shame on the corrupt councillors!!
can't really say its not ture seen for self shops are moving out of potteries because of high rent
Detroit here we come. Unless the town is handed back to the people. The Council is supposed to serve the people. Multimillion pound car parks don't help. Reduce business rates, reduce red tape. Improve transport. Spend car park money on re-building a tram service
In 10 years time Hanley will just be a hideous mish mash of empty overgrown listed properties, car parks, charity shops/ pound shops and rotting empty businesses with To Let signs hanging over the door. I moved up to Leek in February so i'm lucky enough to not have to visit this dump anymore unless I need to go to the bank or catch a connection from the bus station.
You should be on the council. Do you like living in Stoke ? What are the nicer areas ? Is there really only one bus every four days ?
Not to mention Burslem. Its in decline also.
How many of the council leaders in charge have grown up in the town?
They have no loyalty to the town unless they have grown up in the area.
It makes me ache how the gov can pull several trillion out of the air when they need it, but there's no money to redevelop the whole of Stoke.
Why do you think people don’t want to go out / live / be there?
Why don't you contact the council with your views ?
What investment where is the leveling up money ?
i am ready to invest in hanley. i have around £45.
any suggestions ?
The council have ruined Hanley.
Hanley like so many town and city centres are ruined largely because millions now shop on the internet.
Hanley needs to have a zip wire from the shopping centre to waterworld
If you don’t build it…..they won’t come
Unfortunately there not gonna build there or even entertain any thought of doing anything with them you have the intu centre and all fezzy Park been developed for big multi national companies who will pay through the roof to rent a building etc so why do they need build Hanley they'd sooner see it rot same as Longton and then demolish it all and build new, as its already there motto spend little on new build or spend millions on redeveloping, me personally the church and the other heritage buildings that have a meaning for our great city should be top of list priority
The Stoke councils need sacking and being filled with people from the local business communities.
Why doesn’t the council instead knocking buildings down is use them for homeless shelters for the homeless folk out there but they prefer to waste there money on things us folk do not want
Most councils don't know their arse from their elbow. They waste money on crap!
Hanley is awful at the moment it’s like a dead town there compared to how it used to be we can put the joy back in stoke on trent and create a nice city center in this space with lots of history but the council don’t care anymore it’s like there just going to slowly let it keep getting worse
It’s a shame but it’s a dying town!
Shopping parks & online shopping are why people aren’t going to Hanley !
It’s silly building car parks because parkings free on Festival Park. Or Wolstanton.
Your right, these buildings need to be utalising. May be flats or business, warehouses where online shopping can be distributed!
It's nothing another £5 million car park can't fix
because they can give thier friends money. its not stupidity, its not incompetence, they give out contracts to companies they have vested interest or shares in
drain the swamp
i said it on another comment, banks and landlords are destroying the country
I'd never visit stoke. Baghead town.
Hate to say it, Hanley has to be one of the worse town centres in the whole of the UK.
It's got absolutely nothing to do with funnelling money into the hands of those they are invested in right? Lol
get rid of background noise. Over powering. Switched off. Yours truly a Stokey in Hanley
For evil to flourish good peopel need to do nothing ✌👍
Cheaper to go the Trafford centre on the train than park your car on that new car park. Why would anyone want to stay in that new hotel. 1 it is too far away from the centre of Hanley. 2 it is bang in the middle of Tesco and that 5 metre beach 😂😂
The pottery industry is gone the mines are gone….so where is the money coming from ?
😢
👍
You lot keep voting them in.
yet another multistorey car park
ghost town
Ah yes more car parks, lets turn into the US with cars driving out pedestrian locals....
Its all being done on purpose, across the lands, people will moan and the time to do something about it will be gone
The council are happy to destroy the heritage of this town to try to make it into a cookie cutter town of cheap, architecturally bland buildings.
Bit of a dive got to be fair. Gloomy place, and the accent is weird.
Allah Akbar
You should get into politics lol
How’s it going now?
Online shopping has killed town shops. I'm not suprised though. e.g. I wanted some Asics trainers recently. Went to the Sports Direct shop in Longton, hardly a pair in there. Went to Sports Direct online, and they had hundreds. Delivered next day. It's like they don't even want their shops to succeed.
Add to this the closure of the Pot Banks, the homelessness, the immigration and the monkey dust, you have 6 dead towns.
All stemming from greed of some sort.
The Pot Banks closed because the owners moved their business to the far east, where labout rates were a fraction of what the unions in Stoke had escalated the wages to.
In the early 90s, I heard from a mate that a toilet sprayer on Chloride Shires was getting paid £600 a week. For spraying FFS! Meanwhile, we were doing engineering across the road for £200 to £300.
Our work involved having gone to college, and an apprenticeship, and having to use your brain all day long. Spraying toilets did not, but it paid 2 to 3 times as much.
No wonder the owners moved it abroad. The greed of the workers and the unions forced most of the people in all 6 towns, to be jobless.
That's when the rot started to take over.
Also, carpark charges. Why would anyone want to pay to come into Hanley or Stoke, when you can park at Festival Site for free?
Perhaps this was the plan all along. Let Hanley slowly deteriorate, and in the meantime, build up the Festival Site, and the Wolstanton Site, with massive, free carparks. Like leaving an old animal to starve to death. No intervention required.
The council should be ashamed of themselves.
Well said