Fighting, drug dealing... women scared to walk alone - but now 'it's much better'

Saqib Hayat is remembering what Bury New Road used to be like.

Rubbish piled in the alleys, fighting, drug dealing, women scared to walk the streets. Now though he says things are different.

"It's much better," said Saqib, 25, whose business AS Mobiles has been on Bury New Road since 2017. "There's no criminals in the street harassing women. It's much cleaner.

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"People used to be scared to get their phones out in case they got robbed. They say it was like that for 35 years. I don't know why they didn't do anything sooner."

It's been two years since police and the council launched a huge crackdown on Manchester's notorious 'Counterfeit Street'. Dubbed Operation Vulcan, it's seen more than 200 knock-off shops closed down, 238 people arrested and more than 1,000 tonnes of counterfeit clothing confiscated.

Hundreds of thousands of dodgy vapes have also been destroyed and more than 2m class C drugs - predominantly painkillers and anti-depressants such as pregabalin and diazepam - have been seized from what was the epicentre of the north's trade in illicit medication.

Meanwhile the big developers have started eyeing up one of the few inner-city areas yet to fully succumb to Manchester's building boom. But what does it all mean for the vape shops, takeaways and wholesalers that have been plying their trade on Bury New Road for years?

For some, it seems, one of the first impacts is less custom. "The majority of businesses round here are trade only so it hasn't affected business that much," one long-standing wholesaler, who asked not to be named, said.

"But it's been really difficult for the food businesses because a lot of the employees [from the counterfeit shops] used to eat there."

At AS Mobiles, Saqib says