Wolverhampton marks 20 years as a city - your memories and reaction

This Sunday (January 31) marks exactly 20 years since Wolverhampton was officially awarded Millennium City Status.

Brighton and Hove and Inverness also won the right to call themselves cities alongside Wolverhampton when the results were announced by the Home Office on December 18, 2020.

Upon hearing the news, the Editor of the Express & Star at the time, Warren Wilson said: "We have known for a long time that this is a great place with a wonderful past and a vibrant future. This announcement confirms this to the rest of the nation."

Since then the city has gone through a wealth of changes and developments, following the promise of extra investment in recognition of its greater status.

A message from the Leader of Wolverhampton Council, Cllr Ian Brookfield

"It is hard to believe two decades have gone by since Wolverhampton became a Millennium City. We remain hugely proud that Her Majesty the Queen chose to honour Wolverhampton in this way.

"In the intervening years, we have made huge progress as one of three major cities in the West Midlands and Wolverhampton's profile has grown on a national and international stage.

"We are realising our regeneration ambitions with £4.4billion of investment on site or in the pipeline across the city. Our state-of-the-art £150million Interchange is making us better connected and stimulating economic growth.

"We are reimagining and reinventing our city and town centres to deliver new living, employment, leisure and events opportunities. We’re also leading the way in digital transformation as a 5G testbed and through our growing full-fibre network.

"Our university continues to go from strength to strength, we have a Premier League football team ensuring our city's name is seen and heard all over the world.

"The past 20 years have been far from easy, the Great Recession hit us hard and the current Covid-19 pandemic is also having a huge social and economic impact which will take many years to recover from.

"Our city and its people are resilient, our motto is 'out of darkness cometh light' and throughout our history we have always overcome any crisis by looking after our own, combined with the innovation and unparalleled work ethic and enterprise of Wulfrunians.

"We are ambitious for the future, we will relight our city and emerge from the shadow of Covid stronger and ready for the next 20 years and beyond."

Wolverhampton residents - views and comments

Dianne Hughes: "I was born and grew up in Bilston, but have lived in Penn for many years. I was born in 1952, so maybe I just look back through rose-coloured spectacles, but I don’t think so.

"My earliest memories of Wolverhampton are of the old arcade, where we went to buy my sister’s wedding dress. I loved Beatties. It was a treat to be taken there and the staircase was like something from a film.

"As I grew up, Wolverhampton provided my entertainment. I saw Stevie Wonder and other Motown acts at the Gaumont. I went to the rollerdrome and then to the Catacombs and the Lafayette, plus other venues.

"When I wanted clothes or shoes, I could always find them in Wolverhampton - Chelsea Girl and Dolcis were my favourites. I remember meeting up with friends at the Mander Centre on Saturday afternoons, then going home to get ready to return for the nightlife. There was nothing you couldn’t get from Wolverhampton.

"Now it is dreary. I know Covid is leaving its mark, but people don’t even seem to care enough to follow the arrows. On the rare occasions I have to go, I can’t wait to come away. It almost has a cloud of sadness hanging over it, especially for those of us old enough to remember what it was like in the past."

Tracey Russell: "Growing up in the 60s and 70s it was always lovely to go to town with my parents. As a teenager it was nice to go on the bus, meet friends and shop.

"I haven’t been there for years as it’s now rundown, not safe and lots of areas are eyesores. To me it's still a town, but not the nice one of my childhood and youth."

Kevin Jones: "I would say it’s very much a mixed bag. We have a very diverse community and as a result some fantastic places to eat scattered around the city. We’ve also seen the start of progress on the back of Wolves premiership status and new housing as a result of Birmingham’s growth.

"However, there have been many false dawns with the Summer Row project being abandoned after removing many shop owners from the area. Hopefully, Westside and some of the other planned developments can still go ahead.

"There are so many brownfield sites waiting to be converted and the centre is currently empty and left behind other local city/town centres like Telford, Shrewsbury and Birmingham."

David Williams: "As a child in the 80s I remember it being dirty, grey and dull, although it was very busy and people always seemed to be quite cheerful and polite.

"Now, although it's cleaner and a few eyesore buildings have gone, the life has also gone and been replaced with empty shops and a generation of people of all ages who tend to be rude, abrupt and full of their own self-importance."

Matthew Holder: "I had to travel through Wolverhampton in November and was struck by the opportunities which exist, the place now being an empty canvas.

"I was impressed with the wide roads and many elegant buildings. I was also struck by the apparent empty spaces on the first floors and above many of the buildings.

"I have responded to several council questionnaires about the future of the centre, mentioning these thoughts. I believe that the ideas of creating zones such as the entertainment zones are sound.

"It is then up to individuals and businesses to take advantage of the new settings and fill in the gaps. However, visitors to the town must first be able to park easily and for no or very small charges.

"The empty spaces need to be converted to housing as soon as possible, with entrepreneurs encouraged to do this with tax breaks including reduced council rates for the first few years of resident occupation.

"Wolverhampton will only become vibrant again if people are there, either living there or visiting unhindered. Well done to those who have recognised the opportunities and are starting to invest in the city centre."

Keith Smith: "The drive for going green and the stupid idea of trying to turn the centre into a cosmopolitan area with French-style cafe culture is never going to happen despite the idyllic artist's impressions. This is Wolverhampton, not the Riviera."

Colin Johnson: "The new market looks so awful from the outside. A missed opportunity."

Steve Bradley: "I do think we have to remember that, after we had become a city, the council had, in the name of (unequally applied) national austerity, more than £100 million in Government funding snatched away from it.

"So we probably need to be a bit more focused when it comes to identifying scapegoats. And a lot of the above units had already ceased to exist before city status was conferred.

"But I do think the council has been consistently behind the curve when it comes to keeping up with retail habits - again partly not its fault as the online shopping boom has gathered pace in the last 20 years.

"But it has been very late in seeing that more shop units should probably be given over to leisure, that houses should be built in the city centre to create footfall for what's already there, and that parks should be created to foster a more relaxing atmosphere and to provide an all-too-vital green lung.

"The appearance of the city on each side of the railway line on the approach to the station remains a disgrace and creates a very poor first impression of Wolverhampton for those viewing it for the first, second, third or umpteenth time.

"Although I understand that that area is now the focus of a tidy-up, it's happening years too late, and doesn't suggest the kind of swagger you'd expect from a new city.

"The Civic Hall revamp has been a total fiasco - again the victim of circumstances to a degree, with builders going bust, and Covid striking, but badly managed nonetheless.

"The balcony being too heavy for the foundations seems like the kind of issue that should have been identified very early on. Without that jewel in our crown, the night-time economy has plummeted.

"One bright spark has been the re-emergence of Wolves, and the spring in our step that their success and style gave us. And don't forget the people in this multicultural gem, giving the lie to the poisonous Drawbridge-Britain notion that we can't get along with those who are different from ourselves. A mixed picture, then, but I'm still proud to call it my home."

Louise Mills: " In my honest opinion, the city status is not what brings improvements to the city. Wolves reaching the Premier League was a far bigger trigger for improvements in the city and remains that way.

"Premier League football brings sponsorship and improvements to the stadium which has a knock-on impact on the image of the city. The university would then be the next thing that I feel improved the city centre; its growth and new buildings have been an investment that has improved the look and attraction of the city.

"City status was bid for in order to bring additional funding in. However, I feel our council have always and will always waste these funding streams on projects that are not required and have no impact.

"City centre shops before the pandemic were already struggling as people's shopping habits changed. Yet the council spent money on resurfacing the high street and inserting benches in areas of the city nobody would want or need to gather or sit in.

"This money would have been better spent on filling the empty town centre units in ways like Birmingham Council have, with crazy golf and restaurants as these are commercial areas of growth.

"There is no point improving the surrounding area of something that is closed? Until this is realised, the city status has and will change nothing."

Jan Kellond: "I remember the day city status was announced very well. I had recently been to Brighton where my daughter attended an open day at the university, and thought 'how can we compete with this place for city status?'

"On the day the announcement was due, I rang the local authority number and asked if they had heard anything. The lady on the switchboard asked if I was from the press. I assured her I wasn’t and she said: "We’ve got it!"

"I asked about Brighton and she replied that they had got it too. A brilliant outcome for two cities so close to my heart."

Cllr Linda Leach (Lab. Bilston North): "I remember Wolverhampton as always being lively, especially weekend nights with a good variety of wine bars and pubs to choose from and a variety of clubs that were open until the early hours.

"I always felt perfectly safe. We had plenty of police walking the beat and there were plenty of taxis that you felt safe to get into.

"I had my very first hairdressing job as a Saturday girl in a little shop called Olivia Confer's down by the market. I was 13 years old and I’d never been to Wolverhampton before, only Bilston.

"However, my mom would meet me out of work and we would go to the market, which was incredible. You could get anything you needed from there.

"There were also some huge department stores which I loved going around. There was no need to shop anywhere else as Wolverhampton catered for everyone with Beatties, C&A, Littlewoods, Woolworths, Owen Owen and many more. It was so vibrant. You could spend hours shopping.

"Unfortunately, Wolverhampton has changed. The big department stores have been hit by a move to online shopping. It’s so sad but we only have ourselves to blame as the old saying 'use it or lose it' shows.

"Wolverhampton is not on its own. All city and town centres have deteriorated because of lack of use, lack of footfall and funding.

"But it has greatly improved in many other ways. We have a great football team in Wolverhampton Wanderers. We also have a great tram service, a new train and bus station, the wonderful Grand Theatre and our Civic Hall is being refurbished. Not to forget a fantastic art gallery, library and outstanding university.

"We have award-winning park and canals, leisure centres and an incredible youth centre, all delivered by the Labour Council that I’m immensely proud to sit on."

Iain Ash: "From 2001 to 2009 everything was fine. Then we hit a bit of a wall. Then 2012 to 2018 wasn't so bad.

"The fact pound shops are here reflects more about how people use our city centre. We lost the affluence that could sustain the variety that’s wanted. I think people gravitated towards shopping online rather than jumped ship and shopped elsewhere."

Martin Joseph Bristow: "City status is irrelevant. Wolverhampton has become less inviting simply because it is relatively economically unsuccessful. Our schools are in the lower quarter of performance measured by Ofsted and the city centre is laid waste by lack of access and commercial decline.

"The attempts to regenerate fail because Wolverhampton is simply not wealthy enough to sustain high-end business and leisure with a high proportion of residents relying in some part upon benefits for their income.

"Wolverhampton needs better schools, improved lifelong learning opportunities and a far more pro-enterprise culture. City status is not the key to any of this.

"We are always encouraged to demand more and more spending on pet projects when we should be managing our resources far better and trusting Wulfrunians more."

Marcus Garvey: "I love Wolverhampton. I think it’s taken a big hit with Birmingham city centre shopping and the Merry Hill Centre. It has a long way to go but I think we can get it back on track with better shops and more leisure and entertainment venues."

Tina Mccheyne: "I love my city, but I still think of it as a town. I loved it more in the 70s I guess, but then I was young and it was a vibrant place of clubs, cinemas, pubs and individual boutiques.

"The big department stores and supermarkets started to kill off the little shops in every town, not just ours. The American malls with their long shopping hours were copied and our shops could not compete.

"I still love Wolverhampton but feel it is kind of stuck. It needs to have venues. A cinema was promised when we lost the Gaumont, and that’s a long time ago. There is only really the overpriced Grand Theatre for entertainment. The students have their places but there’s nothing for people of other ages. It's a great shame."

Al Samujh: "Wolverhampton never grew organically as a city; it's just a town with a new tag. Its suburbs are vast enough to justify city status, but it's centre is just too small, surrounded by a ring road which is far too close.

"It doesn't have the cultural sweep of a successful city, with not even a decent central cinema to speak of and few decent (non-chain) places where you can go to relax, dine and chat. It's fine if you want to go out and drink yourself into a stupor though.

"The bottom line is this town, like so many others, has been starved of cash for decades, whilst successive governments use the bulk of their GDP to service the south east.

"You can't sustain a city socially or culturally when the economic infrastructure has been blighted for so many years."

Mohammed Jawed: "I am a lifelong resident of Whitmore Reans/Dunstall. I feel the pace of change in the city has been at its fastest at any point in my life as far as I can recall.

"I agree with many other residents that we have seen a drastic decline in both Wolverhampton’s physical condition and its community spirit. Some of this decline I believe matches or even exceeds the average national decline seen in towns and cities up and down the country in both economic and social terms.

"Some changes are due to the unique shape and make-up Wolverhampton, in part due its planning strategy in the past 20 years, along with major changes in the needs and habits of the city’s residents.

"Immigration from both the EU and outside the EU, aided by Wolverhampton’s longstanding reputation as a multicultural city and the city council’s push for being a city of sanctuary, has certainly been influential in the major changes to the community make-up of my area.

"The area was already suffering from existing social problems such as poverty, poor health, education and crime. The additional associated pressures on local services and resources have made existing problems even worse, and even with all the initiatives and extra investment, these issues are still visible today.

"The physical condition of my area has significantly deteriorated, particularly as amenities have been stripped back to the bare bones and family homes have been cut up and turned into bedsits and cheap flats.

"There are fewer bin collections and escalating cases of fly-tipping. Street gangs have always been there, but I get the feeling that gangs like to thrive in the chaos that a 'big city metropolis' can provide.

"As a result of becoming a city, Wolverhampton’s image and investment has in my opinion become more focused on the city centre rather than its residential areas.

"The city centre itself has been affected by parking fees, which makes no sense if you need to encourage a growth in traditional retail. Having said that, the free three hour parking at Sainsbury’s St George's is a lifesaver. Those who enjoy shopping there will be pleased with the new store.

"We might have a football team that’s in the Premier League and whose ambition is fuelled by what appears to be unlimited reserves of money, but it does appear to me that the council is hanging onto the football club’s coat tails to sell their vision of the city to potential commercial investors whose interests and intentions may be more commercial than civic."

Adam Wood: "Sadly, since gaining city status I feel I have seen a drastic decline in the community of Wolverhampton. Shops have become empty, the nightlife is in decline and pubs have closed.

"More than that though, we have lost our community areas. West Park has been left to go to seed; grass verges are not replanted. Wolverhampton in Bloom has been reduced to purely Wednesfield in Bloom.

"Community centres have given way to centres exclusively for certain communities - Kurdish, Afro-Caribbean, Muslim, Punjabi etc. There is a need for all cultures to retain their heritage but no longer do our communities feel together - there is a separation in our local society.

"We no longer help and support each other but climb over one another in a pitiful attempt to reach the top of the swamp. Adult education centres have closed. Libraries have closed.

"Amenities have been stripped back to the bare bones and Council Tax rises year on year without fail whilst city services are cut. We pay more each year and get less in return. Look at the Snow Hill redevelopment, the failed Royal Hospital project, the pie in the sky plans for pedestrianisation and the claimed remodelling of Victoria Street and its environs.

"The council has squandered money, planned poorly, allowed the wholesale change of community homes into squats and bedsits and sat idly by whilst drug dens and cannabis farms have pushed up our homelessness and families have been priced out of their homes through rising rates.

"Businesses have been pushed out of the city by rising business rates, rising rents and lack of custom as a result of greed from parking fees.

"The only thing that has grown and developed since Wolverhampton became a city is the greed and blind ambition of a council that can't plan and can't budget.

"Our city is failing in both its management and its community spirit. We are a town at heart with ideas well above our station and budget."

Sarah Swan: "I moved back to Wolverhampton because of the range of good schools. As a family we have enjoyed some great facilities that we did not have when we lived for a bit in Staffordshire.

"In particular we love Aldersley Stadium, the Bert Williams Leisure Centre, all the amazing local sports clubs such as Wolves and Bilston FC, the rugby club, Wolverhampton Wheelers and the Karate .

"We love West Park and think Central Youth Theatre is a wonderful charity. We had a fabulous local library and a reasonable bus service. And the people in Wolverhampton are very friendly.

"I think with shops we get what we deserve - in the sense that if people do not use local shops they close. It is the same everywhere. Shops had closed before the pandemic but we did go to town most weeks. It's really sad to see the decline of local businesses everywhere."

Cllr Martin Waite (Lab. Penn): "I think Wolverhampton has got a bit of a self-esteem problem. There are a lot of good people here who are working hard to make things happen.

"But we are a post-industrial city known for heavy industry and we haven't really successfully replaced what we used to do. And development is hard.

"We are up against a lot of other cities and towns who are trying to do the same thing. Some of the skills people have are no longer relevant so we've got to equip not just our children, but also adults with new skills for the 21st century.

"We are working towards forging a new identity and creating a workforce for today is a major challenge.

"We also have to look at which avenue to take if we're not going to have retail, which has suffered all over the country and not just in Wolverhampton. This is exactly why we're looking towards leisure.

"Wolverhampton has also had its share of bad luck, with the Summer Row scheme failing some years back, and now the national lockdown hitting just as we're engaging in talks with Odeon Cinemas.

"But we have also had successes with Jaguar Land Rover, online sports retailers Wiggle moving from Portsmouth to Wolverhampton, Moog investing in the city and everything that has taken place at the i54.

"Coming out of industrialisation and forging a new future is hard work. I would like everyone to believe in Wolverhampton. If we don't, who else will?

"There aren't any easy answers, because if there was, we'd have done them by now. The future is going to be different and we have to learn how to adapt in order to flourish."

Carol Hyatt: "Wolverhampton is a caring place. When Government cuts resulted in the council getting about £600 less per household, so the council too had to make cuts.

"They asked people what their priorities should be via a questionnaire and people said social services. Our social services were protected, and ask anyone, they are some of the best around even after austerity.

"I have seen first hand how caring most people in Wolverhampton are, and to be honest, that goes for many of the council decisions too. I took part in a meet your MP session, organised by environmental charities in response to the changes in planning proposed by this Government.

"People were blaming the council for the things that the Government was responsible for and the MP did not even correct them. It is easy to blame the local council. But take housing for example. It is the Government that sets the targets and talks of consequences for councils that don’t meet them, forcing tough decisions.

"The Government gave the last right of appeal to the builder not the local community or council, and now Conservatives say brownfields first, with no thought of how the additional cost of building on brownfield sites would be met.

"I favour more garden villages myself, and hope that the city of Wolverhampton will become a greener and more sustainable place to live."

Jenny Charles: "We live in Penn and love living here. The people are kind and caring. I was still going into Wolverhampton to shop until last March, but I've but not been to a shop since.

"We moved here 42 years ago when it was vibrant, but it is a shame with how we have lost so many good shops, which have been replaced with lots of charity shops. Also, the Merry Hill Centre took over because of free parking, although personally I don’t go there."