Kingsdale Court Seacroft: Rundown, vandalised and rat-infested Leeds housing estate likely to be demolished

Kingsdale Court, on Boggart Hill Road in Seacroft, is set to be regenerated in some form, following years of decay, damage and dereliction. Leeds City Council has now bought 79 of the 88 flats spread across the estate’s eight medium-rise blocks.

A report published last week said the local authority could use special powers to force through takeovers of the remaining nine, with negotiations with those owners having stalled. The council needs ownership of the whole site to be able to crack on with modernising it.

Senior councillors discussed the project at an executive board meeting on Wednesday. Refurbishing the blocks, which were built in the 1960s and 70s, is one option technically under consideration. But while no final decision has been made yet, the council’s director of city development, Martin Farrington, suggested that retaining the current buildings was unlikely.

He told the meeting: “Given the nature of the properties and the significant state of repair (needed), while we’ve not come forward with a definitive proposition at this point in time, I think our preferred approach would be based around demolition and newbuilds.”

Mr Farrington said that the council had had to weed through “complex arrangements” around the ownership of the estate and its flats, since first revealing its ambitions for the site in early 2021. He said that besides the 79 flats, the local authority had also since managed to acquire the land on which the blocks sit, removing a major stumbling block to redevelopment in the process.

He added: “We’ve made considerable progress and it shows our intent, with the final nine flats remaining, to redevelop the site at a future point in time.”

Councillor Helen Hayden, the executive member for housing said: “This is going to be really positive for this area. My preference would also be demolition and building really sustainable, low carbon houses that people can afford to heat.”

The scale of issues on Kingsdale Court became public in 2019 when the authorities temporarily shut down and evacuated two of the blocks – Farnley House and Gillstead House – amid a serious fire risk and rats infesting the buildings.