In this video, we’re going to take you for a tour around the notorious St Paul’s area in Cheltenham.

That’s a lovely mutual there, and as you’ll see in this video, street art is prominent in this part of Cheltenham.

Now, I want to say off the top that Cheltenham is a lovely area for the most part.

But a note in this report from Gloucestershire County Council sums it up perfectly, Cheltenham has the largest contrast in deprivation within Gloucestershire.

This means, Cheltenham is home to both very affluent and very deprived areas, but it’s the deprived crime-ridden areas that don’t the press and support they need; which is why we’re doing this video.

As we drive around, you’ll notice that St Paul’s looks relatively tidy compared to some of the other areas we’ve covered on the channel, and most of the houses are fairly uniform in appearance.

But it’s what lies beneath that we’re interested in, and as always, the crime stats paint a clearer picture.

St Paul’s is the third most dangerous suburb in Cheltenham with anywhere between 60 and 100 reported crimes per month, which is nothing to be proud of as it’s a small area with around just 5 thousand residents.

Interestingly St Paul’s is the bike theft capital of Cheltenham, so you don’t want to leave your bike unattended while you pop into the shops.

Some of the news headlines to come out of St Pauls are pretty terrifying and cover everything from murder to terrorism; such as this arrest for suspicion of terrorist plots, stabbings and murders, drug raids, and so on.

It’s the depravity report that really hits home as to how badly St Paul’s is suffering.

St Paul’s has the second most deprived areas in Cheltenham, and it’s in the bottom 10% for the whole country.

It’s hard to believe that while walking or driving around most of the area, but these stats are a harsh reminder that many of the residents don’t have the basic things most of us take for granted and that’s something I’d like to see addressed.

As you can see from the footage, the way most of St Paul’s is designed is a network of tight roads with terraced houses and very little space to move around.

No one really likes living in close proximity to other people, and I’m sure there is a correlation between the number of people living in a square mile and the number of issues.

St Paul’s is really close to the town center and the The Brewery Quarter, too, which is where a lot of Cheltenham’s nightlife is, so I’m sure there are a lot of students living here.

The problem with it being so close to the town center and looking pretty decent on the surface is that if you don’t know Cheltenham well and you take one wrong turn on a drunken night out, you could end up in some trouble.

We were driving around in the morning, and as we’ve found with most crime-heavy neighborhoods, there’s not a lot going on in the mornings - it’s when nightfall comes that most of the action takes place.

It’s surprising how dense of a residential suburb St Paul’s is, there is little more than a few shops and a small park, and nothing much else to do.

It’s a proper concrete jungle and we started to feel a little claustrophobic driving around and kept getting a feeling of de ja vous.

I thought I’d end with a nice drivers’-view of one of the roads here, thanks for watching, as always please take a moment to press the like button and subscribe to the channel, if you made it this far into the video you must have been entertained at least a little bit. Cheers.

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