Our once-booming town is benefits sinkhole where HALF of adults are out of work & feral kids torch homes with fireworks
KIDS as young as 14 sell heroin on the streets and gangs of rampaging youths set fire to houses as locals claim they are too frightened to go out for a Sunday roast.
In a once-booming town on County Durham – formerly touted as a beacon of welfare reform – a massive 46 per cent of the population are jobless.
Now locals in Newton Aycliffe have spoken of how working doesn’t pay and families are better off claiming benefits.
Youngsters with no role models or prospects smoke drugs such as cannabis out of “hopelessness”, residents tell us.
And the town has suffered a spate of terrifying arson attacks – with homes and cars torched in one terrifying rampage in just last month.
Ironically, Newton Aycliffe, which was created in 1947, was once the flagship town of Lord Beverage’s new welfare state.
The benefits system was introduced under Labour’s first Prime Minister Clement Atlee, as the Government began the huge task of rebuilding after the war.
And Newton Aycliffe was held up as a beacon of modern living, envisioned as “classless” and “a paradise for housewives”.
However, almost 80 years later, the town is a far cry from its imagined prosperity and success.
A massive 43 per cent in the constituency of Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor are economically inactive, compared to the national average of 21 percent.
This means they have not been seeking work within the last month, are unable to start within the next fortnight, or a combination of the two.
A further 3 per cent of the 38K-strong population haven’t got a job but are looking for one, and are classed as unemployed.
Full-time mother Jade Carr tells us she is better off on benefits because she can’t afford the childcare she would need to go to work.
The 20-year-old said: “I’m a single mum, which is hard.
“To get help with childcare, your child needs to be a certain age or you have to work a certain number of hours.
“I tried to go to college when I had my baby, but I couldn’t finish the course because I didn’t get enough help with childcare. I couldn’t take her in with me when she was sick.
“There should be more help to get back into work.
“I’m trying to look for a job but I can’t get one because I have no qualifications. And to get qualifications, I need to go to college. But I don’t have childcare.
“I have never had a job in Newton Aycliffe. There are so many people here, and so few jobs.
“I don’t drive so I can’t travel to other towns and cities for work.”
Drug dealing at 14
Houses and shops in the town are boarded up, while grassy areas are strewn with empty beer cans and packets of drugs.
We see discarded wrappers from anabolic steroids, which are taken recreationally to build muscle.
Just days ago, a woman posted a picture on Facebook of a heroin-filled syringe, claiming it had been found by her six-year-old nephew on their housing estate.
Michelle Melles, 42, who doesn’t work due to a disability, told us: “There’s nothing for the kids to do.
“They smash bus shelters, set fire to people’s houses and pinch cars and motorbikes.
“Anything you can think of, it’s happened in Newton Aycliffe.
“There’s a drug problem, and it’s not just cannabis, it’s the hard stuff.
“I’ve seen kids selling it. They are as young as 14 selling heroin and cocaine.
“It does upset me because I think, ‘God you can do so much better’.
“There have been stabbings. They put fireworks through my door.
“I’ve had death threats.
“The police haven’t got enough staff, so they only tackle emergency situations.
“The kids do it for fun as they don’t see the consequences. There are no police.
“Youngsters have no role models to give them advice and to become better.”
Factory closures
The Royal Ordnance Factory opened in the area in 1941, producing munitions including bullets, shells and mines.
The famous site employed 17,000 workers, who were mainly women dubbed the “Aycliffe Angels”.
After the Second World War, Great Lake Chemicals took over the factory until its demolition in 2004.
In the 1980s two of the town’s largest employers – Eaton Axles and BIP – made a succession of redundancies.
At the same time, a number of mines in County Durham closed, with the last colliery shutting its doors in 1994.
Michelle added: “The area began to decline 15 years ago, the shops started closing, the markets and the youth clubs disappeared.
“I feel like we have been let down.
“Money needs to be put into Newton Aycliffe for police and to build our industry.
“Some people want to work but they can’t.
“They would struggle more working than on benefits, especially families.
“They can’t afford to work. As soon as you get a job, all of your benefits go out the window.
“The town has changed and it upsets me because my parents tell me all these stories about its glory days but I can’t experience that.
“My parents moved here when it was a new town. The market was always packed, every day of the week.
“They used to like to go to the pub on a Sunday and have a meal, but they can’t now because they’re too scared that someone will start on them and they’ll get stabbed.”
‘Hopelessness’
In 2023, the highest rate of drug-poisoning deaths in England and Wales was observed in the North East, according to the ONS.
There were 174 deaths per million and 441 overall.
Barbara Thow, 70, a retired learning disability nurse, said: “The biggest issue seems to be the youth. The kids ride on their motor cross vehicles.
“They ride bikes quickly past people.
“You see quite a lot of young people who are drugged up.
“They take drugs and smoke marijuana.
“They don’t see a future for themselves. I know a couple, and their kids smoke it all the time.
“It’s an escape. They feel as though they won’t get anywhere anyway.
“There is hopelessness in a lot of the youngsters.
“There is poverty in Newton Aycliffe.
“Kids go to school often with a cream cake or a Greggs dummy – a sausage roll.
“Rents are expensive and locals struggle to keep up with the cost of living.
“There are a lot of nail shops and vape stores.”
Peter Pumfrett, 70, a retired butcher added: “Families struggle here because they are not qualified for jobs.
“They closed all the mines in the area. We have the Hitachi plant but people around here aren’t qualified for those jobs as they are skilled.
“People are reliant on benefits, they look at jobs and say, ‘I can’t afford to do that’.
“Someone told me that they go on holiday twice a year when they don’t work which surprised me. I know people who work hard and can’t even put a slice of bread on the table for their kids.
“I was working for a pound more than what the dole was offering me.
“It has a huge impact on the town.
“All the shops are closed down. It’s like a ghost town.
“It used to be a bustling town 15 years ago.
“The cost of living has gone up massively. I can’t believe how dear it is now.
“Locals are struggling to keep up with how expensive it is.”
Kacper Krystek, 19, a Theology student at Durham University, has a part time job in a shop.
He now lives in Durham city, where he also works, but is from Newton Aycliffe originally.
He says he struggled to get a job in his home town, but was able to find one immediately in nearby Darlington, nine miles away.
He told us: “Everything is closing down, the banks are all gone. It’s not looking good.
“It makes me sad, it’s gone downhill.
“There is a lack of jobs in the town. I got straight A’s and I struggled to find a job here.
“There’s plenty of jobs in Darlington, where I used to work, and there’s loads in Durham but there’s nothing in Newton Aycliffe.
“It’s difficult to work outside of the town. I worked in Darlington, which is 40 minutes away by car.
“I had to take a bus from Durham to Darlington and, at times, it took three hours.
“We have good bus services but they are becoming less frequent. It’s difficult to get places if you don’t have a car.
“Poverty is a huge issue here. Breakfast clubs are a necessity, especially for working parents.
“There’s not much to do, especially if you are younger.
“Antisocial behaviour is prominent because it’s a poor area and parents don’t care, there is no punishment.
“There’s a lot of dirt bikes and motorbikes flying around.
“There’s not much anyone can do about it.
“There’s a lot of vandalism. It’s very noisy and there are a lot of disturbances.”
A Durham County Council spokesperson said: “Newton Aycliffe has a lot going for it and we do everything we can with our partners to make it the best possible place to live, work, visit and invest.
“We were involved in establishing Aycliffe Business Park – the largest in the North East and one of the biggest nationally – which is home to more than 500 companies that together provide 10,000 jobs for local people. In response to demand from businesses to be based at the park, we’ve also been involved in a £153m expansion of the site through the Forrest Park project.
“We work with the private owners of the town centre to deliver regeneration there, with a £20m Levelling Up bid showing our ambition for Newton Aycliffe and those plans still being progressed. We have also invested in the town’s leisure centre, including moving Newton Aycliffe’s Library into the building.
“In common with towns up and down the country – particularly those in the North of England, Newton Aycliffe does have levels of drug use, poverty and anti-social behaviour; and we work with partner organisations to address these.”
Durham Constabulary response
A Durham Constabulary spokesperson said: “Newton Aycliffe, like any other town across the country, has its good and bad but as a neighbourhood team we always strive to serve our community and undertake several targeted initiatives to tackle issues such as anti-social behaviour and drug use.
“We have specific campaigns such as Operation Pave which involves working with the council’s anti-social behaviour team to identify prolific offenders, arrest them, and address their offending with the assistance of the Youth Offending Team and other partners.
“We also carry out specific covert patrols to targeting drug dealing and are constantly collating and acting on intelligence received from the local community. We’d always encourage residents who have concerns to report them directly to us so we can work with them to continue to ensure our town is a safe place to live and work.”