'It’s a boost to the town’ is a cliched saying, but in the case of Luton football club's remarkable promotion to the Premier League, it is most apt.

Only a few short years ago I once more made the trip to Kenilworth Road to watch my (at the time) beloved Barnet who I have since lost some love for (when they moved out of Barnet).

Luton, as a town, gets what can conservatively be described as a bad press. No, I do not live there, but yes, it is nearby to Ellisville, and I have made the visit twice this year, bar the airport, and it is as it always has been: Depressing. And, like many other towns the length and breadth of Blighty, it is in dire need of a paint job and investment in buildings, businesses, activity and hope.

The away supporter entrance at the football ground is indicative of the town. You enter via a gap between a terrace of houses to go up a metal staircase that looks like something frequented from a Victorian country house to enter a ground that, with a capacity of only 10,000, is as miserable and soul destroying as the area that surrounds it.

Yet only ten years ago, they were non-league playing the likes of Tamworth and Braintree, yet now they are gearing up for City, United and the Arsenal.

Despite this welcome footballing fillip to the town, Luton has again been voted (according to ilivehere.co.uk) the worst town in England to live in, beating notable entries such as Bradford (the land of dreams, if those dreams consist of takeaways and pound shops) and Slough (if the world ever deserves an enema, then Slough is undoubtedly where the tube should be inserted).

The Luton reviews included ‘it makes Slough comparable to the playboy tax exile of Monaco’ and ‘Luton has been lurking around the top ten like a pervert in a bush for a decade’.

So, what makes Luton so ‘dire’ if that’s what it is: The Daily Mirror recently did an ‘expose’, which is like stating that Mr Tumble presented an Oxford university lecture on biodynamics. They found that locals, in the main, stated they feel ‘unsafe’, that unemployment is a huge issue in the town, as well as a lack of restaurants, bars and nightclubs and the highest level of homelessness in the east of England.

The police aren’t trusted, there is scant little for youngsters to do, and there are high levels of mental illness and substance abuse.

But, as with Luton, and many other towns that are left to rot, including my hometown of Hastings, the problems are widespread and sticking plasters do little to stem the blood flow from gaping, infected wounds, which are exacerbated by those in power continuing to be in denial as to how bad the lot of their peoples have become.

Lindsey Sweet, chair of ‘Love Luton’ and no doubt one who has a vested interest in painting a positive picture of the town in lieu of any concrete evidence, claims that Luton is a ‘vibrant, diverse town with award winning parks and fabulous communities who support one another and businesses and companies that are investing in the town’.

Picking that apart: Vibrant means ‘full of energy and life’, which it is not. The ‘award winning parks’ refers to six Luton parks having ‘green flag status’, impressive on the face of it, but not when there are 2325 such awards doled out annually across the UK. Businesses patently don’t want to set up shop there and the communities, as with swathes of the rest of the country are diverse, but there is very little, if any, integration between distinct communities, with what can only be described as ‘enclaves’, being built. Even in my own village, which has large Muslim and white English communities, both live in distinct areas with, sadly, next to no level of integration between the two groups.

So yes, the soundbite is part truth in that Luton FC will, in a small way ‘bring the community together’ for a couple of hours every other Saturday for the forthcoming season, but the town's numerous and ongoing problems are fully ingrained and much deeper than this collective, sporadic display of cohesion.

Until those in power wake up and admit there are huge problems, and seek the investment needed to get business back into the town, have an overhaul of the environment in which people live, and build facilities to engage young and old minds alike, across differing communities with varying tastes, wants and needs, they are going nowhere.

Unless they encourage true hope and cohesion, and now, the only award Luton will be up for in the foreseeable a future will not be the Premier League, but the worst town award once more in 2024 and beyond…y

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher