The area around the New Islington Marina and Great Ancoats Street is known for many things – its artisan bakeries, natural wine shops, bobbing houseboats, even its blossoming population of sausage dogs and yorkiepoos.
One thing it’s not well-known for: its cut-price crack cocaine.
Yet if a recent report in The Sun newspaper is to be believed, the area around the former Toys R Us site – tipped to be the long-term future home of No 10 North – is riddled with drug crime and prostitution. The piece describes the site as ‘Hooker Alley’ and ‘an area popular with sex workers and homeless junkies’, where addicts can score crack for £20 and ‘shoot up heroin and smoke crack in the streets’.
It’s a narrative echoed by Reform UK mayoral candidate Sian Astley, who posted about the area on Facebook. She said: “The fact that Burnham’s northern ‘nerve centre’ may be only a few hundred yards from a drug hotspot tells us all we need to know about drug crime under Labour.”
Residents and visitors feel safe in the area
It’s true that overall, Manchester saw a huge rise in recorded drug crimes last year – rising by a staggering 31 per cent with 6,631 offences recorded in 2025. GMP bosses say this is as a result of tackling crime gangs, which in turn is uncovering more drug dealing.
But in the immediate surroundings of the construction site, due to be turned into a civil service building within the next five years, the description of a ‘drug and prostitution riddled’ New Islington doesn’t chime.
“I wouldn’t say it was as bleak as all that,” laughs Tom Bennion, a 30-year-old vendor who works at Stubbs Mill on the border of Miles Platting. “I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of crime in the area – it’s more the kind of place where people take their kids out, walk their dogs, that kind of thing. Mind you, I don’t hang around here at night. Maybe it all changes.”
Jonathan, a 24-year-old student who lives in the huge student tower block on the corner of Store St, also felt the characterisation of the area was wrong. “It feels very safe, even at night,” he said. “The student halls are very high-level, I think a lot of the accommodation around here is. It feels safer here than in the city centre.”
And Steven Aston, 33, a fashion buyer who was out walking his one-year-old pooch Oscar, also strongly disagreed with the description. “This place has a history,” he said. “And maybe people still associate it with that kind of thing from ten or fifteen years ago. But it’s been heavily developed and, well, gentrified. It’s not like that anymore. It’s quite a young, affluent area.”
Aston added there were still signs of crime on the area’s extremities – further into Miles Platting, or towards the town centre in the Northern Quarter. “But I think if anything there’s been less crime recently. There used to be a lot of phone thefts and cars having their windows smashed in, stuff like that. It happens less now.”
There was a a red light district, but now there are bakeries and wine shops
The area around Toys R Us was once a notorious red light district, and reports anecdotally surface on Reddit of sex workers using the area’s copious AirBnBs to host their services. But the neighbourhood has seen the impact of investment and redevelopment spill over from nearby Ancoats. The change has improved crime levels, according to locals. Though it’s also driven up rents and is steadily pricing Miles Platting locals further out of the neighbourhood, now dominated by affluent white collar jobbers and a large population of Southerners.
There are pockets of vulgarity. The Piccadilly Club bills itself as a ‘massage parlour’ and strip club, and hints at ‘instant relief for whatever muscle you require rubbing’. It tops an American sweets and vape shop called Candyland on the corner of Ducie St, just a stone’s throw from a similar shop further up Great Ancoats Street.
“As a resident I just don’t really see that stuff,” one local resident, who didn’t wish to be named told us, when asked about the supposed darker side of the area. “I’ve lived here for a while because it feels really safe. It’s a lot better here than elsewhere in the city.”
The 29-year-old, who owns her nearby flat, was hopeful the government would follow through with the plan to move No 10 North to the site off Redhill Street. “I’m hoping it will raise the price of my flat,” she said, grinning. “And I think it’s good they’re challenging the London bubble.”
There is still a drugs and homeless problem in the wider area
Of course, it all depends on how far afield you go. One Miles Platting resident, who works near the marina, noted that there were well-known sex worker hotspots around Piccadilly Station, under the railway bridges at Fairfield Street.
Closer by, the New Islington Health Centre runs a homeless clinic, including a subsection of those struggling with heroin and other drug addictions.
“We often see homeless drug addicts around the health centre in particular,” a couple from Newton Heath waiting for an appointment at the GP surgery told the LDRS. “They’re here almost every time we come.”
The statistics on Police.Uk show the area has overall lower crime rates than city centre hotspots such as Piccadilly, Lower Cheetham. GMP were asked to provide an area breakdown of drug and sex work related offences, but said they were unable to do so.
Developments like a new No 10 could only change any area for the better
Yet even if the new No 10 did sit in the middle of an area addled by the types of crime most closely associated with homelessness and exploitation – would that be such a bad thing?
“You don’t fix a neighbourhood by running away from it,” said commenter Liam Smyth in response to the Reform candidate’s post. “Putting a major nerve center right next to a challenged area brings immediate investment, more foot traffic, and a much heavier security and police presence exactly where it’s needed most. If leaders only set up offices in pristine, wealthy areas, we’d rightly accuse them of hiding in an ivory tower.”
So when we look towards the ‘Ivory tower’ Ancoats, home to some of the most expensive addresses in Manchester, or towards the pockets of criminality in Piccadilly or Miles Platting – which is it really?
By Local Democracy Reporter Charlotte Hall.
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