The new Manor Castle ward combines the two old wards of Manor and Castle. It is very largely a working class area predominantly made up of social housing. However following the right-to-buy legislation and a large scale programme of demolition and rebuild in the last 15 years, owner occupation has increased. The Manor area is predominantly white while the Castle side is more culturally diverse with the Parkhill flats dominating the area until recently.

The Manor estate along with neighbourhoods like Wybourn and Skye Edge faced serious problems following the collapse of Sheffield’s major manufacturing industries on which most families were dependent financially. The consequence was a rapid decline, from it being a relatively wealthy area to an estate with a high dependency on benefits and the resulting poverty.

This was compounded by a contemporaneous deterioration in the housing stock, the inevitable result being social decline: increased crime; poor educational attainment; high unemployment; poor health.

By 1996, the Manor estate was labelled the 'worst estate in Britain'. The Guardian article that labelled the Manor in this way galvanised local people into taking action, and out of this Manor and Castle Development Trust was born.