Laughing shoplifters, drugs, and prostitution: How district in Leeds became one of the worst places in England to bring up a young child

Residents of one of Britain’s most deprived areas say the area has descended into a whirlwind of drug use, violence and prostitution.

In Harehills, Leeds, nearly three quarters of children are in poverty – compared to an average of 21 per cent across the city. Locals now feel that the area is a lost cause, and everyone that is able to is escaping.

Stark footage shows men fighting in the street, people hunting through bins and evidence of a community they believe has been left to self-destruct.

It comes as Labour-run Leeds Council prepare to slash yet more services in an attempt to battle their £2.5billion debt pile, with children’s and family services, social care and community engagement all being reviewed.

They say they need to cut their funding by 70 per cent in 15 years, with council tax being hiked by 4.98 per cent last year.

The news is a slap in the face to Harehills, who say that this will make little difference – they say they don’t hear anything from the council anyway.

The Greggs, which sits at the centre of the suburb’s main street and is directly opposite a council building where Police Community Support Officers were stationed, said one individual had raided their fridges of 13 sandwiches in one go just days before, before taking more from the delivery van outside.

He was standing outside the police building as they spoke, making threatening gestures towards the shop workers who say they endure shoplifting several times every day.

Alan Smith, 72, said that most of the children in the area are in poverty, with the area changing so much that he is now afraid to go out at night.

Alan Smith, 72, said that most of the children in the area are in poverty, with the area changing so much that he is now afraid to go out at night

In Harehills, Leeds, nearly three quarters of children are in poverty – compared to an average of 21 per cent across the city

Tiktok footage shows a bonfire in a street in Harehills. The area has become familiar with street fights and people hunting through bins

Footage of a backstreet bonfire. Residents say the area has descended into a whirlwind of drug use, violence and prostitution

Labour-run Leeds Council are preparing to slash yet more services in an attempt to battle their £2.5billion debt pile, but locals say they rarely hear from the local authority anyway

He said: ‘How can the kids work on what their mum and dad get? They need to go to work.

‘It’s not safe at nighttime. I’ve seen the area change. Where I live I’ve had murders outside my door, then you’ve got all this very American gang thing. 

A former police officer, postman and ambulance worker he says he is furious he is the one who is being chased to pay for the debt while council bosses are rewarded. 

Chief Executive of Leeds council Tom Riorden is on more than £191,000, while three more directors are upwards of £163,000. 

A total of 23 officials – including those responsible for public health, the city’s finances and health – are on more than £100,000, while the Director of Children and Families follows quickly behind on £97,187.

Mr Smith continued: ‘The very people we brought in – as soon as they walk in they reward themselves. For the rest of us, where has our money gone?

‘In the time that I’ve been here all I’ve seen is the greed. They keep putting our rates up – I’m on a pension, what the hell am I supposed to do?

‘I’ve got to find the money to pay, who are they chasing? I’ve been working all my life, and then they’re rewarding themselves. That’s the hardest thing to accept. How can you reward yourself for failure?

Overflowing bins on a street in Harehills. Footage has shown people hunting through waste, in a sign of the area’s poverty

A musician plays a guitar in front of a stall of shoes and other items

Some insist the area has its character, and that you ‘grow to love it in a bit’

‘On this lane alone – how many many hairdressers do you need? How many chicken shacks do you need? How many off licenses do you need? Where’s the diversity?’

Zaynah Arshad, 23, manages a school clothing shop at the top of Harehills Lane, and said that it has been difficult to pass on price increases to their customers.

The price of a blazer has gone up from £28 to £32, and they have had to put in schemes where customers can pay off their children’s clothing in monthly installments. 

She said: ‘I think everyone’s trying to do what they can for each other, but definitely, I think you can see that there’s struggle out there.

‘When we’re in the place that we are, and with the number of schools that we supply, I’d say 80 per cent are always going to mention something about the price.

‘We keep our prices as low as we can, where we can, but you’ve got a business, you’ve got your overheads, you’ve got your wages, you’ve got your suppliers to pay.’

The shop has been in the area for 25 years, first selling ladies wear and then transitioning into school uniform. They now supply as many as 40 schools.

Ms Arshad continued: ‘You get people come in from like, 20 years ago saying I used to buy my uniform, now I’m buying it for my grandkids.

Riots in the Hare Hill area of Leeds began after social services in the city removed all four children from a family

Police stand by near the remains of a burned bus after civil disturbance in Harehills last year

‘The amount of foreign customers that come in is definitely sky high at the moment. But even the things like the graffiti and the number of times police have come in asking for footage for things that have happened.

‘You can definitely see it’s on the increase of crime and everything. I think taking away the council services – it would definitely have an impact on kids, and the amount of times kids turn to crime as rebellion.

‘Harehills is Harehills, and you grow to love it in a bit. It’s just entertainment! People come through the door, and yes, they might annoy you a bit, but you think, oh, you were a nice story that I can go home and tell.

‘It’s not as bad as people think if you just get on with what you need to do and don’t do anything stupid. Every day is different, you genuinely never know what’s going to happen.’

Tasneem Mustafa, 27, who also works in the shop, spoke about the Harehill riots that raged just opposite the store.

The area erupted into violence after police and social workers arrived at a house to remove children into care after a baby, who was one of seven children living the house, was taken to hospital with a fractured skull.

Police and social workers then became involved with the extended family and, on July 18, four of the children in the house were removed over concerns they would be taken out of the country, to Romania. 

In a tornado of terrifying destruction, police officers and vehicles were attacked, a bus was set on fire and a number of vehicles were damaged.

Tasneem Mustafa, 27, who also works in the shop, spoke about the Harehill riots that raged just opposite the store

Shocking scenes in Leeds as a bus was set on fire and a police car tipped

The smouldering wreckage of a bus set alight in Harehills, Leeds after riots brought chaos to the streets

She said: ‘We felt unsecure when the riots were going right past the shop. There was fire, vandalism, everything.’

Residents say that businesses that were once busy on the area’s main road have one by one closed their doors and been replaced by phone shops, chicken shops and barbers.

Between August 2023 and 2024 there were 1,647 crimes reported in the area. Locals believe far more go unreported.

Business owner Gareth Whitehead, 43, said that the state of Harehills has dived in the 10 years he has been there.

The former bouncer said that he now can’t leave his wife on her own in a shop to go to the football as the area spirals downhill.

Saying he is quite streetwise, he helps protect a nearby charity shopped manned by elderly women – which is repeatedly the target of thieves. 

Mr Whitehead said: ‘It’s always been a rough area but in the last five years it’s gone sharply down.

‘As everyone’s been squeezed up and down the country, this area gets further pushed. It’s gone from a rough area to a poverty stricken, desperate area.

Walking along the main road, a pair of bright pink thongs were hung on the railings

Rubbish piled in waste bins on a street. Between August 2023 and 2024 there were 1,647 crimes reported in the area. Locals believe far more go unreported

A row of shuttered shops. Residents say that businesses that were once busy on the area’s main road have one by one closed their doors and been replaced by phone shops, chicken shops and barber

‘A lot of people don’t want to live like this, don’t want to live with these people, so they move away. Foreigners who are coming into the area and working with families, as soon as they get to Harehills, they get out as soon as they can.

‘All the criminals that come here, or drug dealers or heroin addicts, they all stay here. But all the good English people, the good foreigners, they get out when they can. Over a matter of time its cycling out all the good people.

‘It’s really lawless. The police will come in and check my CCTV if there’s been a murder, but day to day policing of delaying is non existent, totally non existent.

‘It’s a losing battle. This time last year, didn’t have prostitutes out here regularly. You always had beggars but that’s increased a lot as well, then you’ve had the riots as well.’

Mr Whitehead says that he can no longer put his bins out at night because people rip them open and go through his rubbish. 

Even during the day he has to ‘shoo them away’, and he has moved a litter bin down the street after it started to be used as an intimidating meeting point.

He says he has been threatened with fines for the trash on the lane outside his property, with the council saying it is his responsibility to get rid of it.

He continued: ‘From what I can gather, all the money around here goes on cleaning up after people. 

Litter on a back street in Harehills. One resident said he has been threatened with fines by the council, who insist it’s his responsibility to get rid of it

The words ‘food BANK!’ and ‘RTS” are written onto the brickwork on the side of a home

‘In this area, you’ve got basically two types of people. You’ve got people that are just throwing rubbish all over the street, and then you’ve got people like me that are disposing it properly, but then someone else is throwing it all over the street. 

‘After it’s been cleaned, within 24 hours it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned for a month, because it’s just full of people that are in the bins.

‘In this area, I’ve never seen so many grown men with nothing to do through the day. Sometimes it can be 20 guys stood on a street corner.’

Harehills has long been one of the most ethnically diverse areas of Leeds. At least twice before, violence and ill-feeling towards police has spilled out into street violence.

In 2001, hundreds of men went on the rampage in Harehills following the wrongful arrest of an Asian man, Hossein Miah. Officers were lured to nearby Banstead Park over a false report that one had been hit by a petrol bomb.

A multi-ethnic mob then barricaded police with burning furniture from a second-hand store nearby as well as washing machines.

Over 20 cars were torched, 23 officers and a journalist were hurt and a shop was burnt down, with damage put at £500,000.

Twenty-five men were later given jail sentences for what a judge branded ‘violence for the sake of violence’.

A smashed pane of glass in a butcher’s window, which was damaged when people were throwing stones at eachother

Discarded rubbish and household waste including the remains of shelves, baskets and a cabinet

Litter overflowing from rubbish bins down a back alley in the area

Then on Bonfire Night in 2019, terrified Harehills residents cowered indoors as police were forced to battle a five-hour siege by yobs armed with fireworks, bricks and axes.

Butcher Zanist Mahmood, 38, says that violence is not an unusual sight in Harehills – and he often sees schoolboys armed with knives.

He said: ‘It’s a very bad area. People fight over drugs on that corner and broke my window three weeks ago. Fighting together and shooting stones – they broke my window.

‘Sometimes I see people have a knife – children going back to school, they have a knife. It’s too dangerous, they could be fighting in the schools and killing friends.’

Mr Mahmood, who has been in the shop since 2012, continued: ‘Before, people killed people will guns. But now they don’t use guns.

‘Too many people don’t know the law, have no respect for people, are driving really stupidly around here.’

Jenny King, 35, works in a fish and chip shop alongside a second job to make ends meet. She earns £1.44 a month to much to qualify for council tax support and says there is frustration online towards ‘scroungers’ who are on benefits and not working.

She’s lived in Harehills all her life and says the area has become more dangerous since she was young.

Graffiti on the side of a building. The area was developed as people tried to escape overcrowding in the city centre

In the 1890s the closely-packed workers homes were built instead of wide streets and plush detached houses

It’s difficult to imagine the bedded-in terraces of Harehills were once woodland 200 years ago

She said: ‘On my street a lot of the houses are privately owned, but a lot around us are rented and there’s a massive difference between the two.

‘There’s definitely more drug use. I see it everywhere, they don’t hide it – don’t care. It’s definitely more prevalent than it was.

‘The biggest problem is that people are just not working, a lot of it is that people just chose not to. I think – I’m working two jobs… it really makes me angry.

‘There’s no incentive for people to work, that’s the biggest problem.’

Walking through the bedded-in terraces of Harehills, it is difficult to imagine that just 200 years ago it was woodland.

The area was developed as people tried to escape overcrowding in the city centre, and it was first imagined that it would be built with wide streets and plush detached houses – in a plan that was titled ‘New Leeds’.

But in the 1890s the closely-packed workers homes were built instead. By 1906 it was home to two clothing factories as well as a shoe works, a brick works and an iron works, alongside mining infrastructure.

Videos posted on social media show the dramatic scenes that can be found in Harehills today, with spaced-out buskers strumming at electric guitars that aren’t plugged in and people building bonfires in the streets. 

On Bonfire Night in 2019, terrified Harehills residents cowered indoors as police were forced to battle a five-hour siege by yobs armed with fireworks, bricks and axes.

A takeaway restaurant on the high street. Locals say businesses have closed to be replaced by chicken shops and phone stores

Walking along the main road, a pair of bright pink thongs were hung on the railings. 

Two ladies running a traditional café have seen their business plummet in the 29 years they have been there.

They said there used to be queues out the door for their full English breakfasts, but now their older customers’ families are to afraid for them to come down to the area.

Speaking about the council, they said: ‘They should have a cut in their wages and put it back into the system rather than raping the system. It’s disgusting.

‘The area is just absolutely shattered; really, really bad. There’s hardly any English people around here any more, all the shops have closed down on the high street, they’re chicken shops, barber shops, phone shops.

‘It’s always been rough and ready but it’s always been a community. The old people – their families don’t like them coming down any more.

‘I came to work the other day and a fire was going at the back. All the homeless people had pulled all the rubbish out the bins and were burning it to keep warm.’

Leeds Council have blamed their debts on significantly increased costs to provide services and rising demand, especially for vulnerable young people and adults.

Rubbish strewn all over a lawn. The local authority is targeting further savings totalling £273.7million over the next five financial years

This is driven by increases in the number of children looked after due to more children with more significant needs requiring care, along with significant increases in the cost of these placements through private providers.

They say an average cost of external residential placements are £350,000 per year per placement. 

The council had to deliver savings totalling £794.1million from 2010 to the end of the current 2024/25 financial year.

Now they are targeting further savings totalling £273.7million needed across the next five financial years.    

Hairdresser Lamin Sabally said that he had tried to help youngsters off the street but could not get anyone to take it up.

The 42-year-old explained: ‘People are funny. You can’t ask them questions, you can’t have a conversation with them. They’re paranoid.

‘I started last year to take people off the street, teach them to cut hair but it’s not happening. It’s hard. They don’t want to know.

‘This community is a weird community, it seems like nobody trusts nobody. People do nothing in this area. No one cares, which is sad. People are scared to come here.’

Residents complain the area has been ‘shattered’, while council bosses take six figure salaries

Shop keeper Sajid Rafique said he was selling up his shop because the area had become do difficult.

The 49-year-old has battled with shoplifters raiding his store – he claimed a third of shoppers try and steal from him – with thugs intimidating people outside his store.

He said: ‘We’re struggling very much, all shop keepers, especially with what is happening. The beggers are coming and sit on my steps up to my shop and drink.

‘If you ask them to move they start arguing and abusing us. People are scared so shoppers don’t come. They stand near the cash machines when people draw money.

‘Last week someone was robbed with a knife and they took £30 – they found him round the corner at the slot machines.

‘Businesses are not busy now because of these people. All good people, decent people, they have moved from here. What can you do. You can’t do anything.

‘When they come and try to take stuff you have to try and stop them. We get stressed because of it. If ten people come in three people try and take things.’

Fellow store worker Ikraam Khan, 24, said he has installed high-tech CCTV in his store in an attempt to ward off thieves.

Leeds City Council said it continued ‘to do everything we can’ to tackle poverty and inequalities across the city

He added: ‘There are a lot of burglaries here, a lot of petty crimes – shoplifting is almost every day here. Greggs get hit the most, four times a day probably.

‘We got it a lot at the start, probably like once or twice a day. It’s not as common any more because we’ve got a bit more security.

‘That was the hardest bit at the beginning because we don’t have much foot patrol from the police around here, and you also don’t get a lot of support when something does happen. 

‘That hurts small businesses because when something is gone that is your profit gone. You can’t recover that money. But also the shoplifters who do do it, you don’t know why they do it – there’s no excuse of course.’

A spokesperson for Leeds City Council said: ‘Leeds is the second largest local authority in the UK, which is important context when considering the size of its debt in comparison to other local authorities. All of the council’s finances, including borrowing and debt levels, are carefully managed.

‘As is increasingly being seen around the country, councils have only very difficult choices left to use to balance their budgets, meet the needs of residents and not risk being driven to the point of financial distress.

‘We will continue to do everything we can to tackle poverty and reduce inequalities across the city.’