Where is the UK's ugliest wasteland?

A campaign by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe) has asked the public to nominate the UK's ugliest wasteland.

70,000 hectares of land - an area equivalent to Greater London - is said to have been forgotten and the organisation plans to return the worst examples to public use.

Possible nominations could include a disused factory site, rundown park, neglected council estate or pot-holed car park with the results revealed at the end of September.

Send us your suggestions for the UK's ugliest wasteland. What can be done to improve the environment?

This debate is now closed. Read a selection of your comments below.

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The following comments reflect the balance of views we have received:

All of the buildings look the same Mark, UK

Formulaic and dense modern housing estates where all of the buildings look the same. This also goes for these small retail parks. Everything is built down to a price, rather than up to a standard.
Mark, UK

It has to be the vast stretch of land in West Ham - the former Post Office sorting centre, abandoned for new premises, the stretch of former industrial lands adjacent to the river Lea.
Brendan Sheehy, UK

It's just got to be the Channel Tunnel Site, outside Folkestone, Kent. If ever there was a vast, barren eyesore of sterile concrete and steel, this has got to be it! And all so unnecessary - built purely from political motivations.
Alan Hall, UK

The once-splendid Victorian Pier in Colwyn Bay - left to rot. If this building was anywhere near London there would be a national outcry (just witness the furore over the Brighton Pier and the £15 million already allocated to save it).
Richard Jones, N. Wales

Most of south-east London. It is full of high-rise council flats where people are tinned like sardines. Take the Aylesbury Estate in Elephant and Castle, London. I bet whoever designed it would not want to live in it.
Y. A., UK

The whole of Britain is fast becoming a wasteland, as there is never enough money to 'fix anything' at home. Why isn't money being spent on British services, i.e. hospitals, schools, roads police, ambulance, nurses etc etc etc, and improving the environment for all residents. I will certainly not be voting for the Blair gang ever again.
Susan Hillington, Birmingham

How about the former football ground at Hartsdown Park, Margate, as the U.K.'s ugliest wasteland?
Chris Collings, England

Everything inside the M25!
Dan, UK

The council needs to preserve the town centre Helen, Scotland

A once beautiful building - Regent's House in Annan's town centre. A once beautiful building left to decay after the Scottish Power shop left. Now the street level one of Annan's most central sandstone buildings is boarded up and constantly covered in posters. The council needs to preserve the town centre rather than pettily demanding a pub up the road removes exterior flags which brighten up the town.
Helen, Scotland

Downing Street. Say no more. A wasteland of lies and deceit.
Marc H. Turner, UK

Batersea Power Station. The wasteland tag is obvious, the ugly comes from the behaviour of all those involved in its gradual destruction. Forget all those myths about turning it into something or other. All the developers want is the land to build mega priced flats next to the park overlooking the river and Cheyne Walk. What an ugly waste of land!
Graeme, England

A beautiful building with stunning views just left to rot Dewi Pritchard, N. Wales

I nominate two buildings on the outskirts of Holyhead, N. Wales. One an ex-MOD building, overlooking the inner harbour has been left to rot and has tons of potential. The other is just 'down the road' from this building and is the Soldiers Point Hotel. Again, a beautiful building with stunning views just left to rot.
Dewi Pritchard, N. Wales

Without all our great British wastelands, how would we get all our album covers done?
David Watling, UK

The UK's ugliest 'wastelands' are housing estates - planned, designed and built with seemingly no sense of aesthetic appreciation. New British homes built by large building firms, whom I should not name, are the ugliest and most retrograde form of architecture imaginable, turning what should be a beautiful island into a jungle of disgraceful eyesores.
AJ, UK/Germany

The old Garden Festival site in Liverpool, on the side of the river Mersey. A terrible let-down for city of culture!
Phil, Wales

My worst wasteland is in Plymouth, just off Alma Road, by the main station. There was a terrace of nice, early 20th century town houses, which the council allowed to become doss-houses, though some remained as proper homes and hotels. Over the years the condition of the buildings deteriorated. Instead of doing them up and helping with Plymouth's housing problem, the council knocked them all down and left the area as a wasteland. Well done all.
James, UK

I nominate them all as ugly wastelands Tim Collis, London

The country is full of YARP's. Yet Another Retail Park. These are all the same soulless, unimaginative suburban concrete jungles with nasty pre-fab style shops that always sell the same stuff. Everyone knows the stores I am speaking about. I nominate them all as ugly wastelands.
Tim Collis, London

The old BP garage in Ponteland (just north of Newcastle Airport on the A696). Closed down and sold off overnight and now remains a wasteland because of some dispute between the building company who bought it and the local council.
Mark Richardson, UK

The Leeds and Liverpool canal at Burnley - a rubbish filled, weed infested stretch of what could be a tranquil retreat for many.
Andy Murray,GB

My daughter's bedroom. Impossible for anything from this planet to live in it.
Peter, UK

The most neglected piece of land is called the UK. We have a Prime Minister who is forever abroad, a deputy PM who never speaks, and a government that lies to us. Totally neglected.
Nat, UK

Concrete jungles everywhere Kate, UK

How can we ever teach our young to take pride in their surroundings when we don't give them anything to be proud of? Concrete jungles everywhere are an eyesore. Urban renewal is desperately needed in parts of nearly every major city. So, when do we stop talking and start doing?
Kate, UK

Kenilworth Road, Luton. Needs levelling and then leaving well alone for at least 50 years.
Joe KN Ear, UK

Our ugliest eye sore is the bunch of self-interested lobby fodder that fill today's House of Commons.
Edwin Thornber, UK and Romania

Isn't there a another story hiding behind this one, something to do with cramming more people into the supposedly boundless brown field sites within our city walls, so that the land owning aristocracy that live in the countryside don't get their precious view spoiled by another one of those nasty, lower middle class type, bungalow estates?
Reginald Hardsworth, England

As a Newcastle supporter I would have to nominate the Stadium of Light in Sunderland.
Garry H, Newcastle, England

It has already been earmarked for regeneration Tim, UK

Bath, Western Riverside. Not the bit that people mean when they say "Ooh - I like Bath. Bath's nice!" It has already been earmarked for regeneration, though, and it certainly needs it. But will they get rid of or prettify the unsightly gas-holders that dominate the Avon valley in Bath when seen from the valley sides to the north and south?
Tim, UK

Derelict Green King brewery site (now owned by a supermarket chain) in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire - completely overgrown wasteland in a fast growing town that desperately needs public amenities, especially for the youth of the town.
Anne, England

We should take these pieces of land, transform them into recreation parks, wildlife reservations, education centres etc and then name them after great Britons. We should encourage the past/present and future generations to take pride in this wonderful land, make it look pretty and keep it clean and tidy!
Claire, Great Britain

Bracknell... used to be a pretty village, now it's a concrete jungle
Kay, England

How about the Houses of Parliament, they are a complete waste of time and full of worthless rubbish?
Mac, UK

Walton on Thames town centre, Surrey. It was a fairly run-down town centre, but was sold to developers some years ago for redevelopment. A big supermarket was built, but then the development stalled and for the last few years the town centre's been a wasteland of boarded up buildings surrounded by dying local shops, with a huge dusty wasteland dead smack in the middle
Trevor Notrog, Surrey, UK

The whole block had to be gutted and boarded up Helen Kilbride, UK

There is a derelict office block on Ash Road, Aldershot (intersection of the A331 and A323) which has gradually decayed in the 2 years I have lived nearby. At first it was 'offices to let', now it its 'substantial premises to be refurbished'. The whole block had to be gutted and boarded up as vandals kicked the windows in, threw items out of the windows, etc. Boards still have to be replaced regularly as it is apparently fun for youths to break in. I have heard that some have even been injured due to the now unsafe structures.
Helen Kilbride, UK

Some of these 'forgotten sites', in time, return to nature and provide excellent havens for our native wildlife that is being continually squeezed out by our expansion in our towns and cities. By all means they should be made safe, but converting them all to shopping malls and skate parks is not always the best idea. Soon we will only see our native animals and plants in books and on the television; these areas of scrubland can provide a viable habitat for a vastly increased amount of species than the equivalent area of sterile, pesticide-ridden farmland.
Chris, UK

Heathfield Road/Finch Road in Handsworth Birmingham. Derelict petrol station/ houses/ factories. The area looks really bad, is used by drug users and is littered with needles. Worst of all, it is 20 yards from a primary school and across the road from housing.
Naweed Khan, UK

Most of the land either side of the River Lea in East London. It could all be green and great natural resource, instead it's half-demolished buildings and fly-tip rubbish.
Rob, London

Jubilee Gardens, South Bank, London. It's become a dustbowl when it should be a welcoming green space for local residents, workers and visitors as well as something beautiful to look at from the London Eye. What a waste.
Polly Turton, England

As the years go by more of it falls to waste Shaun Davidson, UK

The derelict brick works at Blackley near Elland in West Yorkshire. It was abandoned years ago and simply continues to be an eyesore on the local area. As the years go by more of it falls to waste, it runs parallel to a public footpath and is dangerous. It is also subject to the usual vandalism.
Shaun Davidson, UK

Chunk of land off Portman Road in Newcastle. Used to be a paint factory, apparently, so quite polluted, but about 1 mile outside the city centre.
Helen, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK

I'll agree to Bryan Donkin's in Chesterfield but also add into that the former Arnold Laver timber yard and the former glass works sites which are all in Chesterfield and about a mile apart. What to do with them? In general these sites are in areas of towns and cities where kids/teenagers have little access to activities. Surely somebody must be able to generate something for them out of all this. Multifunctional buildings cannot be too difficult to manage/build/convert. Sorry lots of ideas but no concrete solutions.
Jon Ward, England

Bryan Dokins wasteground in Chesterfield, Derbyshire.
Thomas Oscroft, England

Millennium Dome - ugly and a waste of land.
Carl Wilkes, UK

Great idea, but I hope that, before cleaning up an eyesore you make sure that it is not a haven for wildlife. Remember that wildlife programme about foxes living on a tip?
Sue Nethercott, Bucks