for the promised new market place, shops and school they were told would transform the former mining community’s fortunes.

In April, the site was used to hold a mock funeral for Margaret Thatcher – hundreds of local ex-miners gathering to show their contempt for a politician whose legacy they say is neatly symbolised by a modern Goldthorpe stuck in a narrative of cuts and deprivation.

“I think people really needed to draw a line under Thatcherism,” says Dearne South councillor May Noble. “Once that line had been drawn, people felt they got rid of some of the bitterness. But you have to look at what people have lost. And it is a bleak picture.”

Since The Big Issue in the North

Almost three years ago, Helen Clifton visited towns across the north to look at the early impact of recession and cuts. She returns now to see how the government’s austerity programme has affected these communities. This week she hears of hardship in South Yorkshire, although some are determined to look for silver linings

Almost three years after the government pulled the plug on Goldthorpe’s regeneration, its centre remains blighted by boarded-up houses, shops and empty patches of scruffy land.

Frustrated residents were angry at the delays back in 2011, when The Big Issue in the North first visited the town. Yet they are still waiting

Mining the seam of community spirit

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Some £650,000-worth of promised improvements have been completed in the shopping area, and 105 private and housing association houses have been refurbished with eco-improvements designed to bring down bills.

The next 20 years will see housing association Berneslai Homes build 3,000 new homes in Goldthorpe and the nearby towns of Thurnscoe and Bolton-Upon-Dearne.

By the end of the year, the council will decide whether to turn the site of the old primary school into an Asda supermarket, another retail outlet or a mixed retail and housing development. Around 200 jobs

will be created. And the Dearne Enterprise Centre has remained open, despite closure threats

from the council.“It has been very difficult over the

last three years but we have managed to find some funding. But it’s not going to be the saviour of the area,” Gardiner admits. “All we can do is ease the pain. We haven’t got the resources. There is no cavalry on the hill for places like Goldthorpe. It is just going to be a drop in the ocean.”

But Noble says the revived development has gone some way towards raising spirits.

“People’s hopes and aspirations had reached rock bottom. But now that they know the school is being built they are starting to get some hope back, which should regenerate the area.”

But won’t a new supermarket kill the already struggling local shops?

“This is a tsunami of need.”

Barnsley town hall’s gleaming 1930s hallways reflect the town’s once-prosperous past. But Cllr Alan Gardiner, the council’s cabinet spokesperson for corporate services, paints a depressing picture of the future. He says Goldthorpe is the borough’s most vulnerable town.

“I never thought it would get this bad. I knew there were going to be cuts, but this is a tsunami of need,” he says.

He hopes an official anti-poverty strategy and service audit will squeeze the most out of dwindling council resources. But with budgets shrinking fast, the authority is finding it tough to tackle rising poverty.

“We employed local people to do the research for the strategy,” Gardiner explains. “When they reported back, some of them were in tears. They had no idea it was so bad. We know there is no quick fix. It’s about trying to prioritise where there is need.”

The Audit Office says a quarter of local councils are at risk of financial collapse – which Gardiner claims is exactly what the coalition government wants. “They want us to go out of business,” he says. “But we haven’t got a lot of local private sector businesses to take over services. They are all fighting bankruptcy.”

Yet amid the devastation, council officers have managed to rescue some of the plans for Goldthorpe. It is hoped the remaining 19 boarded-up buildings – including four shops – will be demolished by autumn, and funding has finally been found for the new primary school to be built on the site.

visited Goldthorpe to assess the impact of austerity, Barnsley Council has had to cut 4,000 jobs and save £30 million. April’s Comprehensive Spending Review forced the authority to find an additional £18.7 million in savings this financial year, with a further £32.2 million to be cut by 2017.

One in four of Barnsley’s children is now living in poverty, while a further 21 per cent are living on a knife edge. In Goldthorpe, up to a third of the working age population claims out-of-work benefits.

Welfare reforms are also sucking money out of the local economy. According to the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Barnsley could lose £93 million by 2015, or £626 per resident.

Above: Cllr May Noble outside boarded-up homes in Goldthorpe. Above right: Cllr Alan Gardiner. Left: our story from 2011. Photos: Helen Clifton

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“It would bring people into Goldthorpe,” she says. “They would use the other shops at the same time. I think they could complement each other.”

Together with around 20 other people, Noble has now formed the Goldthorpe Development Group, which organises local development initiatives, planting projects and has secured funding for alley-gating schemes.

“The council and the government are not going to be able to provide these services any more,” she says. “People are having to do these things themselves.”

But other local voluntary sector initiatives say funding cuts are crippling attempts to get Goldthorpe back on its feet.

Back in 2011, local employment course provider, the Lavender Training Café, was struggling. Director Mandy Lowe had re-mortgaged her home to keep it going. But in the same year, the café shut down.

Independent skills provider Attain Skills and Knowledge (ASK), owned by community interest company, About Building Communities, took over the building.

“We realised that there was a need for local training in this part of the community,” founder Walt Bridgen says. “The training provision coming from the government was diminishing all the time.”

ASK, which employs five people, has lost 40 per cent of its funding in the past year. But Bridgen says the government needs to invest in community-based trainers like him.

As an accredited provider of the Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS), ASK helps jobseekers to get the qualifications they need for the often short-term labouring jobs that exist in and around Goldthorpe.

Because the course includes an NVQ Level 2 in construction skills, until this year it attracted 50 per cent match funding from the government. But now unemployed applicants are having to find the full £400 fee themselves.

ASK’s diminishing resources are under even more pressure as many long-term unemployed clients with no IT skills, struggling to cope with the government’s online Universal Jobs Match, are coming to them

desperate for help. Yet in August, the Skills Funding Agency pulled ASK’s IT training grant.

“They stopped the funding, because there are no specific job outcomes. But then the people coming through our doors just don’t have those skills. It’s really demoralising for them.

“There are barriers to our learners entering mainstream education. They really struggle with life skills. They feel comfortable learning in a community setting, like ours. But the government doesn’t want to fund training like this,” says Bridgen.

Noble says welfare reforms are having a “tremendous” effect on the area – and despite a small decrease in unemployment, youth unemployment rose by over 15 per cent across Barnsley in the year up to May.

In contrast to national and regional increases, the number of full-time jobs has fallen by 1.4 per cent – while part-time work in Barnsley has increased by 7.8 per cent, almost seven per cent more than national levels. There are more than four people chasing each vacancy.

Some 800 permanent local jobs will be created by the expansion of online fashion retailer ASOS’ Grimethorpe warehouse. Yet despite vehement claims from the company and their contractors that they are not anti-union, online forums are full of complaints about management bullying, lack of union representation, inadequate breaks, and unpredictable shift patterns.

Unite union says operatives in ASOS are paid just £6.41 an hour – the minimum wage – but are expected to walk eight miles a day, with the minimum permitted break of 20 minutes per six hours of work. Days are nine to ten hours long, and there are no overtime rates.

Phil Bown, Unite regional organiser for North East Yorkshire and Humberside, says the company has got the council “over a barrel”, and is free to exploit local workers.

“Because this government has stated that if you don’t take a job you won’t get any benefits, many people are desperate,” he adds.

People like Fiona Cowie and her partner Damien Cullen, for example. For them, austerity isn’t working. Horse trainer Cowie, 32, a mum of one, has been unemployed for three

years, while labourer Cullen, 32, has been out of work for two. They say the prospects for permanent, secure local jobs are grim.

“I am trying my hardest to get a normal job, but I just can’t get one,” Cullen says. “All the contracts around here aren’t long enough – two weeks, four weeks. Everyone I know is self-employed.”

Welfare reform is making life even tougher. The bedroom tax was introduced shortly after the family moved from a one-bedroom flat to a three-bedroom council house in Goldthorpe.

The extra £56 a month they now have to pay is coming right out of their food budget, forcing them to rely on Goldthorpe food bank. There are no two-bedroomed properties for them to move to.

“I think it’s disgusting,” says Cullen. “Our spare room is only the size of a box.”

“We really struggle by Monday – we don’t have anything left,” adds Cowie. “We are having to give up

Clockwise from top left: Signing up a new referral at Goldthorpe food bank; food bank user Sarah Mitchell; home eco-improvements in the town; food bank referral letter; jobseeking parents Fiona Cowie and Damian Cullen, who rely on the food bank after finding themselves £56 a month worse off thanks to the bedroom tax

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and washer dryer to buy food. She owes £667 to her landlord, and is petrified she will be evicted.

With nowhere else to turn, Sarah, 39, now relies on a weekly food bank parcel.

“Because I’ve had an eating disorder and I’m so ill I need to be careful what I eat,” she explains. “I

do get very angry. If they were in this position they wouldn’t like it. They don’t care.”

“We see a lot of people who have been

through some pretty torrid times,” says founder Captain Lee. “A lot of people have mental health problems or depression. The welfare reforms don’t take into account individual circumstances and needs. There is a huge disconnect between the reality on the ground and what people like Iain Duncan Smith are saying.”

He says the town is stuck in the past, defined by the devastating

“If they were in this position they wouldn’t like it. They don’t care.”

food so our son can eat.”Set up last year by local Salvation

Army ministers Adrian and Christine Lee after they noticed a growing demand following the introduction of benefit reforms, the food bank provides for around 30 families and individuals every week.

Around 60 per cent of clients have had their benefits sanctioned. Since launching, the food bank has handed out 2,000 parcels. It is also trying to tackle the causes of poverty – opening a café to provide local jobs, acting as an advocate for people struggling with benefits claims and helping with CV writing. Yet still the number of referrals rises.

Sarah Mitchell weighs around six stone. She suffers from collapsed lungs and is recovering from an eating disorder, her teeth are rotting and she is painfully gaunt. She hasn’t had any benefits for 14 weeks after missing a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) medical appointment.

She has sold her bed, fridge freezer,

impact of the loss of the collieries.“The anti-Thatcher protest was

a bad advert for Goldthorpe. What does it say to the rest of the world? When I first moved to Goldthorpe, I noticed people walking round with their heads down. They’ve lost their aspirations.”

Yet Bridgen is keen to emphasise that things aren’t all bad. An Aldi distribution site is due to open, creating over 280 warehouse, driver and office staff jobs. He hopes local people will have the skills and confidence to go for the jobs.

But, he warns, the government’s approach is just not working. He describes a visit to the Netherlands and a town hall that couldn’t be more different to Barnsley’s.

“It looked a like a building site, with girders sticking out everywhere. I asked what was wrong with it. But it had been deliberately built like that. It was designed to show that the work of rebuilding communities never stops. And there are no quick fixes for Goldthorpe.”

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