Our once-thriving area is now a ghost town – it’s dead and everyone is desperate to leave

Residents of a once prosperous area say it has now become a ghost town where everyone wants to leave.

Locals of Dagenham, East Londonsaid it had “had enough” of the area because the old hotspots were closed and “nothing has changed”.

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Although it was once a bustling industrial area thanks to the Ford factory, it is now so degraded that people have to emigrate all the way to the United States.

Pat McVeigh and his wife Cathy, who have lived in Dagenham for decades, said MyLondon: “We’ve lived here all our lives but we want to get out because we’ve had enough.

“Everybody around here is fed up, even all of our old friends have moved out.”

Resident Lemmy Kimani, 18, took it a step further and found a way out.

“It’s always degraded,” he said. “I’m glad they’re trying to change it, but growing up here hasn’t changed much,” he said.

“Living in Dagenham, you’ll get used to it.

“I don’t advise anyone to come and live here, people are trying to get out of there.”

Lucky for him, he was offered a scholarship to play football for a college in Seattle, USA, which allowed him to leave the place behind.

A plan to develop 3,500 new homes on Dagenham Green was approved last year, which council hopes will placate residents’ discontent.

Many of the complaint centers about Princess Parade, a row of derelict shops and former businesses are now occupied by churches.

The council insisted that the street was privately owned, but acknowledged that it was in “bad condition”.

Steve Furby, who has lived in the area all his life, added: “A lot of things go like this, people are not proud of their properties.”

It comes after residents of a town dubbed the UK’s worst insisted it had been wrongly beaten by tourists and had “potential”.

Meanwhile, the 50 worst places to live in the UK have been revealed by a new study.

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