Inside the estate that £20m funding promises to revive

A rumpled security guard walks out of the sliding entrance doors of a Morrisons supermarket in southern Bristol.

- ALEX ROSS

The worker looks up at the cloudy sky, then leans back against the railings and lights a rolled-up cigarette.

“Have you seen the news?” a shopper eagerly asks. “No,” signals the guard with a shake of the head. “We’re going to be getting 20 million quid,” declares the customer, smiling from ear to ear.

Hartcliffe is more than 120 miles from Westminster, but news that the post-war housing estate is one of 25 “trailblazer neighbourhoods” announced in chancellor Rachel Reeves’s spending review is already on everyone’s lips.

The details of the plan are vague. Four paragraphs in the published policy paper state that each neighbourhood will get up to £20m funding for community-led regeneration, as well as a “direct link” to Whitehall for investment.

The term “trailblazer” suggests a new idea, although the Tories’ post-Brexit Levelling Up Fund promised – and arguably failed – something similar. And as Labour wrestles against a surge in support for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in working-class areas amid unpopular reforms to the welfare system, critics could argue there are wider goals for Sir Keir Starmer here.

But any political pessimism fails to dampen the spirits in Hartcliffe on a soggy Thursday morning, less than 24 hours after the announcement. “I was like ‘wow’, you don’t very often see things like that for people like us,” says mother-of-two Kirsty Green, who recently took over the management of Hartcliffe Community Centre, a short five-minute walk from the Morrisons supermarket.

The shabby-looking centre was built through a community fundraiser not long after the estate opened in the 1950s – and it’s now showing its age.