‘There’s as many empty cupboards in Bangor as there is in Belfast’

The Kilcooley estate in Bangor is the third-largest in Northern Ireland, with a mainly Protestant and working class population.

Like many similar areas, threatening paramilitary murals and worsening social and economic deprivation have become a permanent fixture.

Alison Blayney, head of the Kilcooley Women’s Centre, said this doesn’t fit with most people’s affluent perception of Bangor.

“The biggest challenge we face as an organisation is that people assume everyone in Bangor is well off,” she told The Irish News.

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“It’s far from the case. Bangor’s a bit like the ‘have yachts and have nots’. It’s quite a spectrum and there’s quite a lot of pockets of poverty in Bangor which a lot of the organisations don’t realise.

“That’s our biggest challenge, getting across that there is need. There’s as many empty cupboards in Bangor as there is in Belfast.”

The cost-of-living crisis is the most pressing issue, with the group’s social supermarket initiative heavily oversubscribed.

“We could easily double the number of people we’re supporting every week,” she said.

“People are dreading September, with the colder months coming and preparing for children going back to school.

“It’s a very challenging time of year with the cost of uniforms.”

On top of this, “the usual challenges of living in a deprived area” include a lack of services and problems getting GP appointments.

“At one point the health trust brought out figures that people in Kilcooley would die 15 years earlier than a better off area in Bangor,” she said.

“There’s huge health disparities in the area. That’s been exacerbated now by the cost-of-living crisis and Covid.”

Alison said the toxic cocktail of misinformation and housing pressures meant that Kilcooley was also not immune to the anti-immigrant sentiment that saw riots flare up across Belfast earlier this month.

“There’s a lot of people in private rental housing at the moment, waiting to get on to the housing list in Kilcooley which is extensive,” she said.

“There isn’t the churn there used to be in houses. I remember back in the day, the Housing Executive used to give people a £1,000 grant to move in because they couldn’t get people to live in the area.

“There is that whole urban myth about migrants taking jobs and houses. You would hear that quite often from people coming in the door.

“It’s the perception rather than the reality.

“They’re just going by what they’ve seen on social media - if it’s on Facebook it must be true.”

She said the pressure on her staff to fill in the gaps in public services was “huge”, with her colleagues facing burn-out.

“Back in the time of Covid, everyone was rapping on our door to assist with delivering public services,” she said.

“All the issues that land on our door on a daily basis, huge mental health issues because people can’t get to their GP.

“By the time we’re getting involved with people, things have deteriorated quite substantially.

“It’s the community and voluntary sector, but we still have to pay our own bills. They’re expecting us to do an awful lot for much, much less.”

This includes running a summer scheme for 65 children over four weeks.

“We had to run it on a shoestring and it was oversubscribed by four times,” she said.

“We advertised the recruitment day for 2pm, but people were out at 7.30am with deck chairs, camping out to get their children into a summer scheme.

“We’re having to feed the children because they’re presenting hungry. It’s just getting worse and worse.”

Her transport costs for taking children out on day trips have also tripled since last year.

With only yearly contracts, she said her staff often didn’t know if they would have a job for the new financial year until March 29.

“You have to have a certain type of dedication to stay in the community sector,” she said.

“The instability of it is unreal; anybody who works in the community sector needs to have nerves of steel to know where their wages are coming from on April 1.”

Asked what made her stay, she said: “It’s a bit like Hotel California, once you’re in it’s hard to leave it.

“The good days outweigh the bad ones. But it’s a huge challenge and there are days we do question ‘should we do something else where you’re more valued?’”

On the image problem facing communities in loyalist areas, she adds: “That would be a general perception. There is an element of underclass going on.”

Urging others not to dehumanise deprived communities, she said: “Everybody wants the best for their children and they want to live their lives in peace and just be happy.

“That’s the majority of people. They just want to do well and keep well, live a long and decent life, but it can be very challenging in areas like Kilcooley.”