It’s not really ideal to have massage parlours stone’s throw away from Blackpool's new £65m Multiversity

The drive to push forward the ambitious multiversity plans has led to Blackpool Council issuing compulsory purchase orders to buy land and homes in central Blackpool.

Independent businesses have raised concerns the impact of CPO’s have left their businesses with uncertain futures.

But they are not the only ones being affected by the CPO, The Blackpool Lead reports.

For the past 18 years, Blackpool’s Horizon programme, funded by Public Health, has focused on helping the borough’s most vulnerable people affected by alcohol and drug dependency and all matters relating to sexual health.

Horizon’s Sex Workers Outreach and Support Service (SWOSS) works alongside the town’s sex workers to provide advice, signposting and support for those most at risk.

In the past five years, the team has seen the numbers of street sex workers diminish to next to none. Increasingly sex workers are operating from the town’s ‘massage parlours’ – some of which are based on Cookson Street.

“They refer to themselves as massage parlours,” says Anthony Harrison-West, sexual health manager for Renaissance UK – a charity which works in partnership with Horizon on drug, alcohol and sexual health harm reduction, the venues operating in Blackpool. “We support owners, managers and the staff who work there.”

In the UK, excluding Northern Ireland, the exchange of sexual services for money is legal under certain conditions. It is illegal to run a brothel, which is an establishment used by more than one person for sex work, and Harrison-West says the permeses operating in Blackpool adhere to these rules.

Fears were initially voiced by Horizon over the demolition of the parlours, without them, they feared, sex workers may turn to more dangerous work on the streets.

“As it happens, the area that the CPO covers has only one parlour in it and it was empty,” says Harrison-West. “It went quiet during Covid and never really got busy again.

“Initially a lot of the people we work with were worried about the future of their business. They knew they were very close to a CPO – but that’s a very specific area of development.”

And Harrison-West says the parlours are “unofficially protected”.

“The parlours have been there as long as I can remember. We know that they are there, the police know where they are if they are needed. We don’t want to lose that and the council doesn't either.”

Despite there being no immediate threat to sex workers on Cookson Street, Harrison-West says that there are ongoing discussions around the future of the area, with a specific focus on how the sex workers can be protected.

“As the future unfolds there are other concerns,” he says. “It’s not really ideal to have those kinds of premises a stone’s throw away from the Multiversity. There have been a lot of conversations around those concerns, ensuring that we protect this group of people. We may have to look at supporting them to relocate.

“There are concerns around safeguarding. We don’t know how old or young these students might be. It’s not ideal to have them stepping out to parlours.”

Harrison-West said that the council has been involved in supporting the charity through these discussions, with elected officials leading the charge on protecting the area. Councillors Jane Hugo and Mark Smith, who represent the Talbot ward, were contacted for comment.

Another charity affected by the plans is Blackpool and Fylde Street Angels, whose Charles Street centre, Angels Rest, has recently relocated to Central Drive.

The group, which works with Blackpool’s homeless population by managing a temporary bed unit and providing food and support in the community, were in the process of renovating the original Angels Rest site on Cookson Street when news reached them about the CPO.

“We have had a difficult time,” says Paul Rawson, manager at Blackpool and Fylde Street Angels. “We have moved from the property but we have been promised compensation and are still waiting.”

The charity was developing its Cookson Street site to support its outreach programme when the pandemic initially halted progression.

“We started to get funding to invest in the building,” says Rawson. “But then we were hit by Covid and had to stop the development. When we came out of it unfortunately letters started coming through saying it was planned to be part of the regeneration.

“Prior to that, we had only been made aware that the other side of Cookson Street was going to be under development. We thought we were okay, we were safe, but that wasn’t the case in the end.”

Rawons says that once a deal has been finalised, the charity should receive remuneration which will help them to claw back some of the costs from the move.

“We know for a fact that the charity and the work that we do does save not only our council, but other local authorities a lot of money,” he says. “The more funding or support we can get does help in all of this. It would be helpful if it could be sorted out.”

And while the charity does get some financial help from the council, Covid followed by the CPO, has dealt Street Angels a “double blow”.

A Blackpool Council spokesperson said: “We fully understand the impact on people living in the properties in the Multiversity area, as we are buying their homes and some businesses need to relocate. We continue to support any residents or tenants who have to move as a result, and nobody will be asked to move without reasonable warning.

“While we cannot go into the details of individual negotiations, these have to take place with the landowner at first. While we’d expect the landlord to update their tenant as per any landlord and tenant agreement, due to the nature of the scheme we have also regularly written to all tenants in the affected area explaining the process and what advice and support is available to them before, during and after the completion of the sale.

“Approximately half of the land has either been completed or has been agreed to be completed in the coming months.”