PEOPLE will be given a preview of how their troubled area is to be transformed at a public meeting tonight.

Housing and planning officials at Wear Valley District Council will unveil their vision for St Helen Auckland, where people have been demanding extra investment to halt a population drift.

Grants from the Government's sixth Single Regeneration Budget round mean that up to £100,000 has been made available to spend on improving St Helen Auckland in the current financial year alone.

A programme of selective demolition has been agreed for the Leazes Lane Estate, where 221 homes are boarded up.

The action followed a market research survey of local people's views, which highlighted the empty homes, teenage drug taking and vandalism, and said that lack of investment had led to a migration from council homes.

Tonight, Wear Valley District Council's assistant planning director, Kevin Parks, and housing director Frank Bouweraerts, will outline proposals designed to improve the whole St Helen's ward.

Councillor Sonny Douthwaite hopes that a housing association will be interested in building new homes.

He said yesterday: "We have fought long and hard for something to be done, and we have agreement over the demolition.

"Now we have to put something back to make St Helen the wonderful place it once was.

"It is wrong that people have to live in conditions which have become so bad that decent people have been driven away.

"It has been a hard slog for a lot of people, but at last something is happening and it is a very exciting time.

"I hope that people will come to the meeting, because we can't do anything until we hear their views. We will put our proposals and they will have the final say."

The meeting is being held at St Helen Auckland Primary School, tonight, at 6pm.