The arrival of the BBC led to jibes and scare stories. But the city is fighting back
Across the road from the Salford Lads Club immortalised by the Smiths, shopkeeper Lynsey Wilding mulls over the national newspaper coverage of her neighbourhood this week. "It's a joke," she says. "They've obviously never been to Salford because it's nothing like what's been in the papers. Mud like that sticks and the crime rate in this area isn't that bad."
It has not been a good week for Salford. The move north of several BBC departments to the MediaCity complex should have helped to burnish its reputation. Instead, the first broadcast of BBC Breakfast from the new studios only brought more of what locals consider to be the usual snobbery of the metropolitan elite in London.
First, it emerged via a freedom of information request that the BBC had spent nearly £2m in two years ferrying staff and guests by rail and plane between London and the north-west. Then there were newspaper reports of a BBC email offering security guards to escort worried 5 Live staff to their cars and tram stops. Notoriously, the memo described Salford as "a different kettle of fish to W12", a reference to the postcode of 5 Live's former home in Shepherd's Bush, west London.
The Salford-knocking coverage got a further boost when 5 Live presenter Rachel Burden was interviewing an athlete who had accidentally left her medals in the car. "What? Around here?" joked Burden.
Cue more negative publicity, prompting the Manchester Evening News to appeal for a halt to the "grim up north" stories, and former Manchester United footballer Gary Neville to tweet about his support for Salford and the north-west.
Salford MP Hazel Blears said she went to Salford Quays on a regular basis and there was always a lot of activity. "It seems like a safe place to be. In any urban environment you get the odd incident," she added.
Wilding said that in the 13 years since her family had owned the bustling convenience store it had not been robbed once. "That surely says something about the area. Yes, you get the odd rogue from time to time, but they are probably a nice person really who are just hanging out with the wrong crowd. There's a real community around here and there are a lot of good people."
The new studio for Breakfast marks the end of the first phase of a move for 2,300 BBC staff from departments including 5 Live, sport, children's and Match of the Day. A further 1,000 will move during the next four years, with the relocation of BBC Three by 2016. Among those who refused to relocate was Breakfast presenter Sian Williams – and 45% decided against heading north at 5 Live and Sport.
Scare stories were spread as a result of a freedom of information request which elicited that there had been a handful of crimes in the past year, including a BBC worker shot at with an air rifle as he cycled home, a producer chased as he confronted bicycle thieves, the theft of laptops and smartphones, and an assault on a security guard.
The corporation pointed out that the "kettle of fish" email was sent last year when the BBC was new to Salford. The area is now bustling and there are more than 50 businesses at MediaCity, including restaurants and shops and hundreds of flats.
Latest available crime figures, from the Police.uk website, show that in February 2012 there were 252 incidents in the Salford postcode area, including two robberies and 88 antisocial behaviour crimes – whereas in White City, 200 miles south, where many of the BBC staff in Salford were formerly based, there were 1,307 reported crimes, with 45 robberies and 386 reported cases of antisocial behaviour.
Lynsey Wilding admitted she had mixed feelings towards MediaCity. A young girl who lives around the corner has secured an apprenticeship with the BBC, but they are few and far between. Blears demanded a meeting with the BBC North director, Peter Salmon, in January after it emerged that of 3,172 Salford people who had applied for jobs with the corporation at MediaCity, just 24 were successful. Eight of these were 16- to 19-year-olds on six-month contracts paid less than £5 an hour. "We need to get a lot more jobs for people living in Salford who want to work there," Wilding adds.
On the Ordsall estate, around the corner from Wilding's shop in Regent Square, Thomas Swift, who had a two-year apprenticeship with the BBC, said: "Why would they need security guards? It's not that bad around here but the things that have been written are terrible. There's supposed to be a no-go zone in Ordsall, but it's not like that. It's pathetic. Look where the riots started – in London. Around here everyone knows each other and if they see someone who's an outsider then they might ask what they're doing, but it doesn't make it a no-go area."His father, Alan, who works as a security guard for the local authority, said the story had been hyped up so much by the media and it was ridiculous to suggest that people would need escorting back to their cars by guards. "The way Salford's been portrayed this week is a disgrace," he said. "I've lived round Salford and Ordsall all my life and it is not like the media portrayal of the place. Like many other areas, it has its problems, but nothing like what's been written. I've brought up three sons and a daughter here and regard it as a fuss about nothing."
John Merry, the leader of Salford city council, said: "The assumption that crime levels will be higher in Salford is flawed and the most up to date crime figures prove this. Despite this, it is not unusual for complexes like MediaCity to have high levels of security, whether they're in Salford, London or any other city.
"This old-fashioned prejudice against the north and doesn't reflect the fantastic experience we've had of working with the BBC. In the past few months I've met dozens of BBC staff who have made the move to Salford and are reaping the rewards of living in the north-west, and the improved quality of life that comes with it."
Stephen Kingston, editor of the radical Salford Star, described the mainstream media's behaviour this week as sheep-like. "The Salford Star is probably one of MediaCity's biggest critics — we're not against the concept but we want the Salford to benefit. At the moment there is resentment because the jobs that were promised for the people of Salford are not there and it has sucked up financial resources. Because of the poverty, health and employment levels, there are all sorts of reasons for the tensions."
But he reckons that Salford is "nowhere near as bad as it used to be in the 1980s". "It's all very well planting MediaCity in the middle of an inner-city area but if you do not solve the problems, it doesn't matter where the hell it is. We want MediaCity to have the right agenda and not just be a tick box exercise."
Michael Tabner, who runs the independent MediaCity blog, said of the furore: "The press knows how to stir the pot and is successfully tapping into some anti-BBC sentiment. It is hardly surprising that London-based publications, the Guardian included, see the story as a kind of microcosm for the north-south divide. It plays to people's stereotypical views of southerners versus northerners, and allows people to question the expense and reasoning behind the MediaCity move at a time of economic austerity."