Burnley Wood - Today

Today

Although the area saw a significant amount of urban clearance during the 1970s, resulting in the loss of residential streets including Holton Street, Rawlinson Street, Russell Street, Swainbank Street, Laurel Street and many parts of Waterloo Road, Springfield Road and Brunswick Street, which became fragmented as infill housing such as Russell Court and Brittania Walk, the Gerald Court sheltered housing complex, now itself demolished and the Burnley Wood School, now Springfield Primary School were built and most of the mills ultimately closed and were given over to other industrial and commercial uses. However in recent years, Burnley Wood has suffered from housing market failure, and became part of East Lancashire's Elevate scheme to clear, rebuild or remodel what were considered to be an over supply of sub-standard housing. The catalyst for this was the 2001 Burnley Riots which brought the problems of Burnley Wood to national attention.

The district lies within the Rosehill with Burnley Wood ward. Demographics show that the ward is 96.86% white British. The index of multiple deprivation places part of Burnley Wood among the 5% most deprived areas in the country, yet parts of neighbouring Rosehill and the area around Woodgrove Road and Brooklands Road within the same ward are in contrast are more affluent than the national average. 21.41% of children in the ward are eligible for free school meals.

The area has a traditionally strong local identity. An active community group, Burnley Wood Community Action Group, publishes a free newspaper, the Burnley Wood Argus, for the area, and Burnley Wood Park, a new community park financed by Elevate, has been built in the centre of the early twenty first century housing clearance area around Morley Street. Previously high crime levels, especially antisocial behaviour by young people, now appear to be in decline: there were 114 crimes per 1,000 inhabitants in the year to December 2007 (Lancashire average 89.4), a fall of 19.2% on the previous twelve months. The area to the west of St. Stephen's church has now been extensively redeveloped with a mix of larger family dwellings and for the first time in its history now allows the church to be viewed in full from Kirkgate rather than behind the previous row of terraces which were recently demolished.