St Matthew's, Leicester

The St Matthew's estate is an area of inner city Leicester. It lies immediately to the northeast of the city centre and is bounded by the A594 ring road to the southwest, the Belgrave Road to the northwest and Humberstone Road to the southeast. To the northeast it is separated from Belgrave by former railway land.

It has a population of approximately 4,000 and is named after the Anglican church of St Matthew's. The area previously consisted of small factories and slum housing - much of it back-to-back houses - and was redeveloped in the 1950s as council housing. The vast majority of the housing stock is local authority owned. The area is isolated (with no adjacent residential areas and is cut off from the city centre by the dual carriageway ring road). It is, statistically, the most deprived neighbourhood in Leicester today and the most income deprived neighbourhood in England (Indices of deprivation 2007).

The population is extremely diverse with large numbers of new arrivals. Although the estate faces some significant challenges, local residents participating in a recent consultation project indicated that they felt some pride in the estate and that it had improved substantially in recent years. Standards of housing have improved as a result of the government's 'Decent Homes' programme and the area is perceived to be safer than it was in the past.