How our council estates turned into ganglands

The gang members start as early as 12. Overwhelmingly they come from broken, workless homes and start out as couriers or lookouts for the older members.

Then they progress up the pecking order, their rising status measured by the viciousness of the crimes they commit.

It is surely by now impossible for even the most lily-livered liberal to deny the association between social breakdown – the unmarried parenting and worklessness prevalent in urban areas – and the development of these gangs.

In Norris Green more than half the people are in social housing and the workless rate is 35 per cent – far above the national average.

A worrying number of estates around the country have turned into ghettoes of hopelessness, vandalism, crime and fear.

A recent poll by YouGov found that a third of social housing tenants nationwide feel that where they live is not “reasonably safe”. Nearly half won’t say that they trust their neighbours and 40 per cent don’t believe that local schools provide a good education.

So the underclass has grown and become concentrated in many council estates. What are we going to do about it?

Of course, we can start by tackling the weaknesses in ­policing, prosecuting and sentencing. These communities have a crisis on their hands and it is offensive that so much ­police time is taken up with ­paperwork.

It is absurd that the police should have known so much about the wrong-doings of Sean Mercer yet have been unable to lock him away until now.

The weakness of our ­justice system – and those who made it so weak – bears a responsibility for the death of Rhys, so it would help if Labour fulfilled its promise to be “tough on crime”. But we need to go much deeper. One of the major causes of crime is the way many estates have ­become centres of unemployment and fractured families.

There is plenty of evidence that unmarried parenting leads to a much greater likelihood of children becoming delinquents. Add that to a concentration of unemployment on a council ­estate and the ­result can be toxic.

Council housing has been around for well over a century. Originally it was allocated to the respectable and even prosperous working class. It was a reward and a privilege for ­people considered worthy of it. It was also for those who had been compulsorily or otherwise moved out of housing areas designated as slums.

But then, in 1949, the allocation of council housing began to change. It was to be granted to people on the basis of need rather than worth. In 1977, this way of doing things became compulsory. And so began the downward spiral of Britain’s council estates.

Sir Robin Wales, the Mayor of Newham in east London, ­described it like this last year: “If you walk in and say ‘I’m homeless’ you get a greater ­priority than if you walk in and say ‘I’ve managed to do something for myself but I’m still looking for a council property’.”

I could add that if you walk in and say: “I’m homeless and I’ve got a baby too,” then you leap ahead as if you had landed on a propitious square in a game of snakes and ladders.

So the system now makes the life-choice of being an unmarried parent and workless easier to fall into. Worse still, it makes it almost impossible to get out of the trap. Once you have council or social housing and are in receipt of housing benefit and council tax benefit, you will find it difficult to find a job that would secure a higher standard of living.

Housing benefit is the dark secret of the whole welfare system. People often say the jobseekers’ allowance and income support are tiny and that few would be discouraged from working by them.

Perhaps. But once you add on housing benefit, council tax relief and other so-called “passport” benefits, the maths changes substantially.

Council estates have become quagmires from which few ­escape. Would you like to guess how many people move out of council estates each year? It is a mere four per cent of residents. Once you are in, it is practically a life sentence.

A large minority of people are living in these estates, subsidised by everyone else and often ­living low-quality lives.

Reform is desperately needed. But even after 11 years in power, ­Labour is still only promising a consultative paper on housing allocation next year. It has not thought the unthinkable. It has buried its head in the sand.

What should be done? First, we must allow those of retirement age to live out their lives in peace in the council homes they have known for years. But after that we should no longer be content to let this disastrous social experiment continue.

Those of working age should be required to seek work if they get subsidised rents or housing benefit. The tenancies should not be for life but for limited periods – an idea that is being taken up in the Netherlands.

Tenants should be encouraged to become the owners or partial owners of their properties. Unmarried parents should no longer jump ahead of those who have worked and planned for their futures in the queue for social housing.

Such a programme – allied to a more purposeful justice system – could make a dramatic difference. If it is not embarked upon, the future for the law-abiding, hardworking families attempting to bring up children on large council estates or in their vicinity will become more perilous still.

 ** James Bartholomew is the author of The Welfare State We’re In.