Dark heart of Britain’s only ‘legal’ red light district

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The cheery municipal sign is designed to bring a splash of colour, a frisson of optimism, to the inner-city gloom. Its upbeat slogan: ‘HOLBECK — where families and communities bloom.’

But this grim area near Leeds city centre is, perhaps, not blooming as well as it might.

That’s because it’s the first ‘legal’ red-light district in the country. And if some of its advocates get their way, it will be the first of many.

Less than a mile from the heart of Britain’s third-largest city, Holbeck is an area in which prostitutes — and the men who buy and sell them — are encouraged by the local authority and police to operate with impunity.

There are no sanctions and no risk of conviction. Widespread drug-taking — sadly an integral part of the lives of many of these women, who have often been abused as teenagers and are subsequently used by pimps who see them as no more than a commodity — is also tolerated, under a scheme that costs local taxpayers £200,000 per year to run.

Most controversial of all, the ‘clients’, who travel into the area in search of paid sex — are welcomed all night, every night, between the hours of 8pm and 6am.

The police do not trouble them, unless officers suspect the women are in danger.

It is a bold — some might say reckless — experiment that has caused deep divisions both here and among those with clear views on how prostitution might be better policed.

Yet now, following a new report, it is set to become a permanent fixture on this benighted stretch of land.

This week, I travelled to Holbeck with a Daily Mail photographer. During the day, much of this area functions as an industrial estate.

In darkness, it seems very different. The business premises have shut down, the only noise coming from the cars cruising around.

The square mile or so of the zone designated as a red-light district has become a dark sexual dystopia. Inside its boundaries, it is very difficult to buy a cup of tea or a pint. There is one run-down cafe, no pubs and no shops.

But one thing certainly is for sale: sex, on every street corner — and at very low prices.

As night drew in, girls began to emerge into the half-light, alone and in pairs. Some would position themselves in dark places waiting for the approach of a potential buyer’s car.

Others were more brazen, waiting determinedly on street corners. Many looked very young, perhaps even under 18. (I later reported this to the police, who said they would investigate.)

Over a three-hour period, the women would get into smart saloons — Audis, Range Rovers, some with blacked-out windows — and then be dropped off back at the same spot.

Some girls didn’t even get into the cars — going about their work in full view on squalid bits of wasteground.

The atmosphere was thoroughly depressing, many of the girls vacant-looking and walking unsteadily (suggesting they were on drugs), with haunted eyes and emaciated faces.

It was striking that no one else was on the streets — apart from ourselves, the girls and, from time to time, a few skinny young men, all wearing hoodies, looking shifty and seedy in the artificial light.

Pimps? Dealers? Whatever they were here for, it wasn’t a romantic stroll in the moonlight.

Underneath a bridge, two women — in their early 20s but looking older — were waiting. I approached one and explained I was from the Daily Mail.

I asked her why she was here and where she was from. ‘I’m from Burnley and I’m trying to get money for my daughter,’ she said.

She told me she charged just £30 for full sex and oral sex together: less than the price of the pub dinner I’d had with the photographer a couple of hours before.

As we spoke, several cars drove past, much to the annoyance of her friend. ‘We could have got some business if she wasn’t talking to you,’ she snapped at me.

I was aware of a low-key police presence and we watched a different girl, whom we believed to be a prostitute, being spoken to by the occupants of a marked police vehicle.

But I thought of those unsavoury-looking men buzzing around the zone — and I had the sense it was all too little, too late.

This controversial experiment, which is run jointly by West Yorkshire Police and Leeds City Council, has a bland and euphemistic title: ‘Managed Approach’ (MA).

No doubt deliberately, that phrase means precisely nothing: it carries no reference to kerb-crawling, drug-taking, pimping, intimidation or any other aspects of the anti-social and criminal behaviour that blights the lives of those who live, work or go to school near the zone. Primary schools are less than a mile away.

This month, a glowing and supposedly independent review of the scheme has been published, claiming the ‘Managed Approach’ has been an emphatic success.

It was carried out by the University of Huddersfield and published by the Safer Leeds Partnership, a conjunction of Leeds City Council and West Yorkshire Police.

A success? Well, perhaps. I found plenty of locals who believe otherwise.

During the pandemic, the city council said it was suspending the MA for the duration of lockdown. That is meant to remain in force.

But this week, the rules were being flouted — and neither the council nor the police appeared to be doing anything about it.

Even as lockdown eases, when we have only just been granted the right to visit our relatives in care homes and where extensive rules on social distancing remain in force, Holbeck is a sexual free-for-all.

A council spokesman explained this by claiming the council no longer had emergency enforcement powers. He added: ‘While the number of women seeking to [do] street sex work is still relatively low, we have seen a recent increase coinciding with the relaxation of social distancing.’

Since the MA was introduced in 2014, it has divided local opinion, bringing into focus wildly differing views about how prostitution should be looked upon by the state.

Holbeck is now a ‘magnet for creepy men from all over the north of England and even further afield who crawl the streets in their cars, leering at women and girls,’ says Anna Fisher of sex-trade law campaign group Nordic Model Now.

Here in Britain, it is not illegal to be a prostitute, although kerb-crawling by clients, soliciting, pimping and running a brothel are crimes.

And that’s what makes this area such a political hot potato — it’s now one of the easiest places in the country to buy sex.

The police and the council have effectively granted an amnesty not just to the prostitutes who are, most people believe, the ultimate victims of the sex trade. But, far more controversially, also to the kerb crawlers, pimps and human traffickers who maintain the supply of women.

The feminist writer Julie Bindel, who has visited Holbeck, has said punters ‘are able to buy a woman with the same ease with which they might pick up a burger’.

Bindel spoke to one Holbeck prostitute who told her: ‘Because [the men] can’t get arrested, they think they can do anything they like. I’ve been raped, and one man urinated on me once and then took a photo.’

Supporters of the MA claim it is best to keep the women in one area where they will not trouble residents — and give them access to various welfare services.

But many families are concerned the sex trade is spilling over into the streets on which they live. Less than a year after the MA started, one prostitute, Daria Pionko, from Poland, was battered to death in the zone.

Her attacker, Lewis Pierre, was jailed for 22 years. Other serious assaults have taken place more recently.

One mother, Nikki Hayes, has had enough. ‘They stand on this corner, that corner. They stand on that road up there,’ she told me.

‘My five-year-old daughter says to me, “What’s that lady doing, Mummy?” How am I expected to explain to her that she’s a prostitute? It’s just impossible . . . Even my 13-year-old son was propositioned by one of the girls.’

Like many residents, Ms Hayes is concerned that prostitution is spilling out beyond the zone’s borders.

Soon after I spoke to her, I found debris, including condom wrappers, left outside on Holbeck Moor, a park used by school children.

Other residents are concerned that houses on the edge of the zone have become brothels.

Karen Cuthbertson owns and runs Christine’s cafe, serving fry-ups to construction workers. Occasionally, she says, some of the prostitutes come into her premises. She sees them as victims.

She says: ‘If they want to do it, they need a place to go. The problem is that it’s all coming out of the zone. One of the blokes from a local hostel was caught just near here on CCTV with a woman down on her knees. You just can’t have that.’

The Rev Rolf Mason is curate of St Luke’s in Holbeck. He chairs a community group and is preparing an alternative report to the one just published

Rev Mason firmly believes the prostitution zone has had a detrimental effect on many of the residents living nearby.

‘We’ve had problems with sex litter, kerb crawling,’ he says. This litter might include used condoms and syringes, women’s clothing and vomit — much of which can carry the risk of disease.

Rev Mason adds: ‘There are other problems — among them women approaching men, asking for business. And women causing fights. It will be in the middle of the night, screaming at punters because they haven’t been paid.

‘Or a pimp getting into a fight with a punter because they’ve not agreed to certain terms. What we underestimate is how many of the women actually live in Holbeck — and operate out of their homes.’

He is particularly concerned about how these women at the edge of society can be exploited by cruel and merciless pimps. ‘Unfortunately, with many of the women, there is going to be a history of trauma and child abuse,’ he says. ‘You’ve definitely got sex trafficking going on.’

Some defenders of the MA argue that many of the prostitutes might be doing the work anyway, so it is better to keep them in one place.

However, the many residents opposed to the zone believe the MA acts as a perfect haven for traffickers.

The new ‘independent’ report into the zone is a mealy-mouthed affair, couched in corporate gobbledygook. Its verdict, which some believe to be a whitewash, is that the council and the police are doing a good job and that progress has been made in reducing the number of prostitutes in the area.

It is very short on specifics — and, oddly, neither the council nor West Yorkshire Police were prepared to discuss its findings in detail.

This curious reluctance to answer questions even extended to the report’s principal author, Prof Jason Roach of Huddersfield University. He told me simply: ‘The report speaks for itself.’

Similarly tongue-tied was Paul Money, Head of the Safer Leeds Partnership, who also refused an interview.

The review cost £50,000 to produce — on top of the estimated £200,000 per year that the Managed Approach costs.

One politician who would talk to me was independent Cllr Sarah Field. She said: ‘I am appalled at this so-called “independent” review . . . Just 30 people were interviewed and fewer than half of those had no vested interest. A whole neighbourhood of Leeds has been given over to prostitution.

‘We see academics enthralled by “sex positivity” while they would never live in Holbeck, nor entertain the notion of themselves, their daughters or their wives “working” there.’

Another critic, independent Cllr Mark Dobson, says the scheme was poorly thought-out.

‘Whatever the report says, it has done nothing to help residents or vulnerable women. If the scheme is a success, why won’t anyone from the council talk about it?’ he asks.

A pertinent question. And though a similar scheme in the Netherlands was dropped after its backers admitted it failed, this report has just rubber-stamped the council’s scheme — and the Managed Approach is set to continue.

This is bad news for so many of the nearby families whose lives have been blighted by the project. But it’s good news for those seedy men in hoodies shuffling around these streets after dark.