Residents despair over six-year demolition row
Clare Worden/BBCResidents of a housing estate said a six-year row over plans to partially demolish the site has affected their mental health.
The Abbey Estate in Thetford, Norfolk, was built in the 1960s and a proposal to redevelop the area was first considered by Breckland Council in 2019.
The developer Bromford Flagship LiveWest (BFL) had its plans rejected by the authority in October 2025, but has appealed against that decision.
BFL said it appreciated the regeneration process was "unsettling" but that residents tell them the estate needs long-term investment.
Clare Worden/BBCBFL's plans include spending £250m demolishing and rebuilding almost half of the 1,100 properties on the estate.
The developer owns 66% of the homes, which were originally built as council-owned housing.
Many residents purchased their homes under the right to buy scheme.
Lyndon Redpath, 77, has lived on the estate since 1975 and is fiercely proud of the area.
"I love it here," he said. "I live next to the sewage works, but I wouldn't live anywhere else."
He said when BFL took over the management of the site residents were asked for their views on what should happen to the estate.
"The first thing they said was the one choice you cannot put is do nothing.
"You can't say leave it alone," Redpath added.
BFL said that all residents affected by its plans would be rehoused in improved homes.
John Fairhall/BBCJess Betts grew up on the estate and has returned and raise her children in the area, who are aged seven, five and three.
If the rebuild project goes ahead she will have to move.
"We actually got our first pet, because I promised [her daughter] when we got our forever home, we would get a cat," she said.
"That's what she always wanted."
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Betts is worried about the impact the uncertainty is having on her children.
"My eldest has anxiety," she said. "My middle boy, he's actually in the middle of being diagnosed with autism, and then my youngest daughter got diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes last year.
"Moving is going to be incredibly difficult."
BFL said despite the strong community pride on the estate there were pockets of antisocial behaviour and fly-tipping that a rebuild would help to address.
Bromford Flagship LiveWestDenise Wyndham and her husband own a property on the estate and she said hearing about the Planning Inspectorate's involvement in the redevelopment plans made her feel "pretty sick".
"It's a permanent worry of what's actually going to happen," said Wyndham.
"If they take our house by the time we have paid back the equity release that we had to take out, we will be homeless because we won't be able to buy anything."
The Planning Inspectorate will hear an appeal by the housing association into Breckland Council's decision to turn down the regeneration project.
After hearing evidence from all the parties concerned, including in public hearings planned for November 2026, it could choose to overturn the decision.
Breckland Council said it would "strongly defend" the decision made by its Planning Committee not to grant planning permission.
Clare Worden/BBCTerry Jermy, the Labour MP for South West Norfolk, said for housing schemes to work local people's views need to be heard.
He said: "We've got to work in partnership and at every stage, even now with the planning decision potentially overturned, BFL have demonstrated they're not working with the community and that's really frustrating.
"They are supposed to be a housing association, they've got a responsibility to work in partnership and they've not demonstrated that."
James Payne, the director of regeneration at BFL, said: "Residents have been telling us for years that the estate needs long-term investment.
"After five years of consultation, we believe we have a responsibility, both to people living on the Abbey now and to future generations, to try to deliver it."
BFL said the regeneration project would create 100 jobs.
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