'I'm ashamed to live here': Inside Britain's most deprived estate where locals ... trends now

Locals on Britain's most deprived estate have revealed the grim reality of life below the breadline where neighbours rummage in each others' bins and use benefits to score drugs on 'lawless' streets. 

Grimsby's deprived East Marsh estate - which envelopes the Lincolnshire town's once-bustling fishing docks - has the lowest household income in England and Wales.

The average £22,200 wage taken home by residents is more than £10,000 below the national average.

And the stark reality of life in the poverty-stricken neighbourhood emerged as locals told of soaring levels of anti-social behaviour, drug use and violent crime.

Veronica Lilliman, 56, who grew up on the streets of the East Marsh estate, said bluntly: 'It's a right bloody dump. It's a s***-tip.

'It used to be fantastic area years ago but it's gone downhill.

'I was born and bred around here. It used to be lovely - a place where people wanted to live.

'Now it's full of smackheads and trouble-makers from other parts of the town. It's disgusting.

'Grimsby used to be fantastic - a fantastic fishing port, jobs for everybody and a real community spirit.

'It used to be hard to get a place around here. People actually wanted to live here.

'Now it doesn't matter who the hell you are. If you're a bloody smackhead or an alcoholic, you'll get moved straight in.

'It's lawless - people just do what they want and they don't care what anyone thinks.

'I hate to say it but this is a dump town now.

'It needs money and investment but who on earth would move jobs here?

'If it was a nice, clean area it might entice people to put money in.

'It needs to be blown up and be built again. It's not a nice thing to say but the whole place needs to start again.

'People used to try to get onto this estate, now they're trying to get out.'

In Rutland Street, where terraced houses sell for just £50,000, ramshackle properties are boarded up from where windows have been put through.

Around the corner, a chip shop sells a fish dish for just £3 and kids' meals - sausage, fishcake, Spam or nuggets with chips - for £2, such is the struggle for many families to afford food.

Mum-of-three Robyn Brown, 33, has lived on the street for almost eight years.

Clutching her three-month-old son Blake, she told of a hand-to-mouth existence to feed her young family.

She said: 'I get paid £1,646 a month and by the end of it I've got nothing left. Everything is so expensive.

'My rent is £395 and then there's the gas, electricity, food and getting to hospital appointment.

'By the end of the month I've got nothing. I'm having to stick stuff into pawn shops just to get by. I've had to put the games console on buy-back because I just can't get by.

'I try and make sure the freezer is stocked up for the kids but day-to-day living is so difficult.

'The house is falling apart and it's impossible to get it fixed. I try not to turn the heating on because it's burning money I just don't have.'

Robyn, who told of her desperation in wanting to move away from the estate, added: 'When I first moved on to the estate there was someone mown down outside my front door, there were terrorist stand-offs, stabbings and all sorts.

'I want to move out of the area away from all these people.

'My kids can't play out because it's not safe. Now I've got a newborn and I don't want him growing up here. I'm desperate to get out.

'It's awful. The kids are disrespectful, the houses are falling apart. There's no help from anyone - everyone's just left to crack on.

'The government just don't care about people like me, or people who live in places like this.

'They proved that over Covid when they were out partying while we were at home, unable to see family members who were in hospital or dying.'

On the dilapidated East Marsh streets, wheelie bins overflow along the road, with cigarette packets and dozens of beer cans lining the kerb. Fly-tipping is rife, say locals, with sofas, mattresses and fridges seen dumped brazenly on the pavement and down back alleys.

One resident, who asked not to be named, told how her neighbours rummage through bins in the hope of finding items that can be sold on.

She said: 'If you leave anything outside that can be pawned or sold at a Cash for Clothes bank, it'll go.

'Sometimes the bins themselves get taken and flogged off for a few quid.

'Anything that they find that they can sell to get their next fix or drink, they'll take.

'I've seen them rifling through my bin in broad daylight.

'People around here have nothing - we live on nothing. Yet somehow we're meant to survive.'

The Conservative government says it has handed Grimsby more than £85m in funds to help it level up. But locals say there is little obvious evidence on where the money has been spend.

Retired coal miner John Finlayson, 68, told how the council recently tried to put up hanging baskets in a bid to make the estate look nicer.

But he said: 'It was like putting a plaster on a gunshot wound.'