Rats, crime and inflation: fears for future of Manchester’s famed Curry Mile
When Nadia Khan used to visit Manchester’s curry mile in the 1990s, the street was filled with families and felt completely safe. Travelling from Milton Keynes to see family and friends in the area, she would be excited to see the bustling street lined with stalls selling clothes and bric-a-brac.
“Now a woman can’t walk on these streets on her own at night without getting harassed,” she said. “It never used to be like that.”
Her complaints do not stop there. The number of people begging on the street and at traffic lights has increased significantly since she was young, she said, and drug dealers have begun operating in the neighbourhood.
She said: “There are beggars everywhere you look, rats in the takeaways and [nitrous oxide] canisters from people using them in cars.”
The city’s well-known curry mile is actually a half-mile stretch of restaurants and Asian sweet shops on Wilmslow Road, just south of the centre. It has been the pride of Manchester, developed in the 50s and 60s to serve south Asian migrants working in the textile industry.
But this piece of history could be at risk of disappearing. Business owners, too, are complaining about crime levels in a neighbourhood that has been left to become filthy while they struggle to survive financially in a cost of living crisis.
Ali Yassin, who has worked on the curry mile for 16 years and now owns Krunchy Fried Chicken there, said footfall on the street has dropped massively since before the pandemic.
“People used to be out four or five times a week,” he said. “Now it’s maybe just once.”
Ali Hassan, who is manager of Jafra restaurant and has worked in different places along this road for the past 10 years, agreed. The price of a drum of oil cost about £13 before the pandemic,
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