Interesting post...
I remember Blackburn's glory days in the early 90's when a 3-up 2-down terraced house could be had for £4k.
......snip

But Margo Grimshaw said that while gloomy forecasts of a credit crisis did concern her, she would "cross her fingers and smile"

But Margo Grimshaw said that while gloomy forecasts of a credit crisis did concern her, she would "cross her fingers and smile" as work on her £15 million Blackburn town-centre project continued.

More to the point who would want to live there??

Blackburn does seem to have its share of detractors (especially the people who actually live there) and for many years I have wondered how the negativity surrounding the town's image might be quantified.

For much of the last year I spent periods of time staying in Winchester, a town often held up as a desirable place to live. During my stay, I posed the following question to myself "well this is a very nice place but exactly how does it compare with Blackburn?"

Eventually, I came across a website that allowed me to make some direct and quantifiable comparisons. The results of this, albeit limited, research is contained in the attached PDF.

Regards

Sox

If you skip over the desirability of the locals, Blackburn actually has a lot going for it.
It's well located in countryside, close to the Lake District, Pennines and Peak district.

I'm guessing you are the same Sox who made the comment on the article you posted. Some of the comments on there sum up why I'm glad to be gone. Lot's of locals (of all races) sitting on their arses expecting the council to sort their lives out.

Edited for square bracket.

It's a bloody awful place, tough to commute to Manchester from and the wages in town are pitiful. Yes, it's near nice countryside, but so are places people actually want to live in - why live in cesspool next to a nice field when you can live in the field ?

The town itself has gone to the dogs and is more divided on racial lines than anywhere else I have seen ...

To be fair to Blackburn though when it comes down to it most places in the UK are sh*tholes to live. I think that's what drew me to this site in the first place. It's not just because I was expecting a house price crash. It's because we've lost sanity when some are willing to pay 7 times the UK's annual salary to live in houses that were built at the turn of the century.

But on the issue of wages in the town being pitiful. It all depends on what you do. I have friends in engineering/science back oop north that earn similar salaries to the same roles darn sarth. Difference is... their money goes a lot, lot further.

The developer has sold about 10 units. The third and largest phase is still not finished and it seems it is still going ahead regardless. Could be toast time for one of the towns "celebrities".

Crash and burn Margo - I couldn't happen to a nicer person - not!

Surely the ltd co will crash and burn? Leaving Margo off the hook

I have been back in this town after a break of about twenty years during which i lived in London. I have great affection for Blackburn though most of my memories of it are from the sixties and seventies when (for all its poverty) it seemed to me to be a happier and more positive place to live.
Blackburn has become a mirror image of the country, its people corrupted by hedonistic self obsession and a ignorance of anything that conflicts with their crass, xenophobic bigotry.
The critique that follows could just as easily be leveled at the country in general;
1) an extraordinarily, inept, corrupt and philistine local authority/goverment made up of a dynasty of corpulent, whiskey swilling sham socialists
2) a bigoted, apathetic white working class, ranging from feral pond life at one extreme to those for whom a chemically induced tan and a boob job is the height of urban 'chic'.
For both there knowledge of the outside world is derived from tabloid newspapers (including the l.e.t for whom some newsworthy item in Preston would require the dispatch of a 'foreign correspondent'), reality TV and annual pilgrimages to rhodes and corfu where having donned union jack shorts they'll proceed to brawl, puke and attempt to spawn.
I would also include
3) an asian community as bigoted as their white counterparts and whose male members are spoilt and misogynistic and
4) a smug middle class who hide there ignorance behind there conspicuous material affluence and (second rate) degreee's.
Somewhere in between all these groups are the decent, honest people of this town/country, irrespective of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age or chosen lifestyles...they are as ever caught between the cynical and ruthless and the ignorant and brutish.
This isn't a tirade of hatred, i was born and brought up in this town and i though I remember it always as 'scruffy' it undeniably used to have a heart and soul.
Be under no illusions, Blackburn is in crisis and the local authority, your council is in denial, it believes its own lies of the 'blackburn renaissance' which a casual glance at the town centre would disprove. This is a dangerous psychosis, when any individual, organization or community is locked into a spiral of decline that they choose not to acknowledge.

Hammer, nail and head in my opinion.

Hammer, nail and head in my opinion.

Had it confirmed NatWest pulled the plug on this, unconfirmed reports of roughly a £6m loss.

Well that's what you get for knocking down "c'est la vie", tbh honest the flats were never going to see were they, even if the crunch hadn't of kicked in.

I saw it last night. the site looks a right mess.

Just watching it on Iplayer, 280 grand to live in the middle of Blackburn!

Inside Out North West

To be fair to Margot, someone has to try and champion the place.

The whole project just seemed too ambitious (compounded by a crashing, country wide, property market).

Sox

Sadly, the scheme has finally collapsed:


"ADMINISTRATORS have taken over Margo Grimshaw’s £15million housing development in Blackburn town centre."

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/searc...re_development/

To be fair to Margot, someone has to try and champion the place.

The whole project just seemed too ambitious (compounded by a crashing, country wide, property market).

Sox