Once beautiful estate is now ruined

Back then, it was a pleasure to take your children with you to do the weekly shop on the Newfield Green shopping precinct. You could meet and chat to other tenants of the estate and safely let your children play while you decided what you were going to have for tea but now what a terrible area this has turned into.

At the end of May the newsagents is closing, the tan shop has already closed, but that wasn’t a necessity. The once popular hardware shop teeters on the brink and the vape shop which sells electronic smoking devices is also on the point of stubbing out its last electronic cigarette. Every morning you can see the workshy and the foulmouthed congregating outside the bread shop come cafe, a dog in tow is the norm, children try to talk to their parents but their attempts fall on deaf ears. For these people to eff and blind in front of children is normal and ultimately these kids take it as the norm - they start to speak with the same dirty mouth.

One family who’s mother has never worked has passed her skills on to her children.

They seem to be in their 20s and they don’t work either but they buy scratch cards and furtively scratch away looking for that elusive winning tickets.

I do understand that times are hard and it is a struggle for most families but most of the people I see do not want to work and would run a mile if they were offered a job.

How can they work when they have to go in the pub or betting shop? That’s a full time job.

Times many when its been necessary to visit the chemist. After walking in front of the shops and arriving there you feel a bit light headed after breathing in the stench of cannabis smoke.

Some of these people complain that they can’t afford this or they owe rent but they have the cash to buy cannabis and other drugs.

A mobile phone is something they cannot do without and IPhones are a must have. Only last week I heard a young woman in her early 20s on her must have phone telling her friend on the other end “I’m just going to the food bank” just where are her priorities?

Now we see some of these people picking cigarette ends up outside the pubs on the estate, even young girls at 18 onwards are doing it, I witnessed this happening only yesterday.

The older decent people are now desperate to get off this estate because of the councils total lack of support for them, all the support goes to the people that’s ruined this once beautiful estate.

Mr Anthony

Sheffield, S14