'Where will I go?'

The human cost of Birmingham's plan for Druids Heath

- Jessica Murray Social affairs correspondent

Xylia Legonas was just a few years off fully repaying her mortgage, and had just finished refurbishing her house after a fire, when someone knocked on her door in 2023 and asked if she was aware of the Druids Heath regeneration project.

"The first thing I said: 'Don't tell me you're going to knock my house down'," she recalled. "He basically said yes and I thought: 'What am I going to do? Where am I going to go?"

After years of discussions, councillors have now approved planning permission to knock down most of Druids Heath, a postwar housing estate on the southern edge of Birmingham, to create higher density housing.

In total, 1,800 homes will be demolished to make way for 3,500 new ones, 400 of which will be designated as affordable, according to the planning documents - 800 fewer than there are now.

This was the main point of contention at the planning committee meeting in which dozens of Druids Heath residents crammed into the room and adjoining corridor to voice their anger - shouts of "these are our homes" and "it's not enough" could be heard throughout.

In the end, the committee was split and the application was narrowly approved by a majority of just one vote.