Sustained investment over many years will be the key to improving 'deprived' areas

HE Bridge Inn in Cotmanhay, to the north of Ilkeston, was a beloved community pub with a large waterside garden.

- ADAM THOMPSON

It was one of few pubs left sitting directly on the canal.

It's not clear how old it was, but the earliest reference is in 1855. More than 150 years on, the Bridge Inn called last orders and closed for the final time in 2018.

Now, it sits derelict. It's become a top five antisocial behaviour hotspot in Erewash, and has to be boarded up again and again, at the council's expense, to try and stop people getting in.

The last time I was there, an old sofa had been dumped in front, and there were piled mattresses and scrap fridges chucked behind. The council and its negligent owners have long argued about demolishing the thing, with no result as yet.

In May this year, literally just around the corner from the Bridge Inn, part of the roof fell in on a fourhouse terrace. Built as council houses in the early 1970s, they had been built as cheap and quick as possible... and they had been built wrong.

Erewash Borough Council and EMH Homes are now making sure all the homes built at the same time are not at risk, which is the right thing to do but it's an extraordinarily complex task.

Since the 19th century, Ilkeston and Cotmanhay have flowed into each other - no two people are likely to agree about exactly where one starts and the other ends.