“Stadium delay puts Liverpool on dead-end street”

Here’s a 2008 article from the Guardian about delays in building the new Liverpool stadium, Anfield Plaza. The article notes how the area around Anfield is currently one of the most deprived places in England with streets of empty and boarded up houses. The area around Venmore street near the stadium was the most deprived LA ward in England in IMD 2007. In IMD 2010 Liverpool continued to lead the English Premier League for deprivation as Alasdair Rae notes in a post on Premier League poverty.

Here’s a google street view grab from a street near Anfield (image captured 2009) to give you an idea:

This article shows how the IMD, as an officially recognised measure of deprivation, is used by news sources to describe poor areas and by local authority leaders to place importance on these areas. However it is important to recognise that the Indices capture relative deprivation – an area could ‘improve’ in absolute terms but still be classed as ‘deprived’ if most other areas improved faster.

“Anfield Plaza is central to the area’s economic revival,” explains John Kelly, Liverpool city council’s executive director for regeneration. “We are very disappointed that the project has been delayed. The local people, in one of the most deprived areas of the country, have been waiting a long time.”