Benefits Street residents booby trap plant pots

A businessman said he was forced to booby-trap his plant pots and hanging baskets on Britain’s famous Benefits Street to stop them being stolen.

Roofer Steve Haywood had premise for more than 20 years on James Turner Street, in Winson Green, Birmingham, where it was reported at one time 90 percent of residents were claiming benefits.

The street and some residents shot to fame when Channel 4 aired a documentary chronicling the lives of those living there, called Benefits Street.

Mr Haywood, who runs Hayward’s Roofing, still has a storage yard on the street but sold up his other business premises due to rising anti-social behaviour, drug crime and fly-tipping on the road.

The roofer, whose business is thriving elsewhere, got on well with the characters made famous by the Channel 4 show, such as White Dee and Fungi, but since then he said the area has gone dramatically downhill.

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At one stage crime got so bad Mr Hayward had to ‘booby-trap’ hanging baskets outside his old premises after he had numerous plants stolen.

He said: “Things were getting that bad on the street we were having plant pots etc stolen during the night. We resorted to booby trapping the hanging baskets.

“We’ve had to move out, we were constantly getting trouble with fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour.

“We’ve still got a storage area, but it was no place to have a business, so we relocated but kept the yard. Some days I come to the yard and outside our gates there are just piles of rubbish.

“I’m on that road on virtually a daily basis and I’m constantly seeing rubbish dumped, the council do a good job, they move it but the next week it is exactly the same.

“I have to pay for a skip, a lot of it is my rubbish but a lot of it is fly-tipped, it’s never ending.”

Mr Hayward said he still kept in touch with some of the Benefits Street stars like White Dee, who went on to make an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother.

He said: “All the characters from Benefits Street, like White Dee, they’ve all moved on. One of the main characters Fungi, unfortunately he’s died, he was a lovely lad, but he had issues with drugs.

“People like White Dee, I do speak to her, because she still lives in Birmingham, but in a different area. She did well out of Big Brother I think and actually she’s a very nice person.”

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Mr Hayward said recent fly-tipped rubbish was only removed three or four days before Express.co.uk visited the street this week.

During our visit we photographed a fridge, mattresses and carpets, as well as wood, all seemingly dumped on the pavement. Also while on the road our reporter witnessed what appeared to be drug deals going on in broad daylight.

Mr Hayward said: “In those three or four days it (the fly-tipping) has started to get back how it was again, it’s that rapid. There’s a lot of drug use on that street, while I’m working there and loading my van, I see drug deals on a regular basis.

“I was talking to one of the dustbin men and he told me the council know which house has dumped a roll of carpet or a mattress, but they don’t challenge them because they are on benefits it would cause undue hardship.

“But if it was me, self-employed working, they’d soon be knocking my door if they suspected me of fly-tipping or whatever. So, you’ve got a two-tier system, which is wrong.”

Mr Hayward said some of the properties on the street where used as houses in multiple occupation, HMOs, sometimes offering first accommodation for newly released prisoners from nearby HMP Prison Birmingham.

Away from the fly-tipping and crime there is a shaft of hope for the street in the shape of a green enterprise project at one end of the road opposite a primary school. The allotment-like space is an area set aside for growing plants and vegetables and is somewhere residents can go for a cup of tea and a conversation.

The Warm Earth project aims to help an area which had its reputation “quite dented” by the TV show, says one of the directors Ernie Holmes.

He said: “We are trying to get the area involved in green enterprises to really try and build up the reputation because it had been quite dented with the Channel 4 documentary.

“We’ve had a few get togethers with the community, we’re encouraging people to form a committee, there’s a lot of really nice people here that come and see us on site, just for a chat or a cup of tea.

“These things don’t change overnight and it’s a transient population, some of whom are not aware of the history of the road when they move in.

“A lot of the older residents that are there, I think they are the ones that will start to take control of the area.

“Obviously we are looking at a five to ten year period for things to change, I think it stands a good chance, certainly the people that we’ve met so far, they seem really quite keen if they can get themselves sorted out a little bit.

“Anything we can do to help to make it a little bit greener and build up the confidence of the area, that will be great.”

In response to Express.co.uk’s enquiry about fly-tipping on the street, Cllr Majid Mahmood, Cabinet Member for Environment, said: “There is no reason or excuse for this behaviour. Fly-tipping harms where we all have to live and work and is carried out by environmental criminals that have no regard for our neighbourhoods or their well-being.

“There are plenty of lawful ways to dispose of waste, all businesses are required by law to have adequate waste disposal arrangements, and cleaning up other people’s mess is a drain on our city’s precious resources.

“Put quite simply, we share the concerns of residents and businesses, but the council does not dump waste on the streets. Irresponsible people do.”

Express.co.uk reached out to West Midlands Police for comment.

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