Agenda item

 

To consider the presentation which provides a further update on Pride in Place for Rotherham Central (previously Plan for Neighbourhoods) 2025-2035.

 

 

At the Chair’s invitation, the Cabinet Member for Transport, Jobs & the Local Economy, Councillor Williams, introduced the update presentation and explained that the Pride in Place programme was a further rebranding of the former Plan for Neighbourhoods. Councillor Williams confirmed that this rebrand did not change what had been reported to IPSC at September’s meeting – namely, the funding of £20 million available to the Rotherham Central area over a 10- year period. The aims of the programme also remained the same - thriving places, stronger communities and giving residents more control.

 

Councillor Williams referred to the recently announced additional scheme within the Rotherham borough at Maltby East where £20 million of funding would also be made available over a 10-year period to fund projects and interventions within that area.

 

Councillor Williams mentioned Councillor Allen’s previously minuted request to be provided with a better overview of the wider regeneration programmes and strategy and how the different funding streams fitted together. Officers had met with the Chair and Councillor Allen prior to this meeting and additional slides had been incorporated into the presentation to provide more context and information in this respect.

 

Councillor Williams confirmed that since September’s meeting, officers had been developing the possible interventions and themes that could come out of the funding and would be taking members through these within the presentation. The deadline to make submissions to government with confirmed plans would be at the end of November and prior to this, service would take a report to Cabinet for approval earlier in November.

 

Simon Moss, the Assistant Director of Planning, Regeneration & Transport provided an update on the strategic intent behind the Council’s regeneration programme and how that related to the funding which had been allocated. The Council had been very successful in securing funding over the last five years via various government funding streams but these funding streams had often been disparate funds that hadn’t always fitted together well. The Assistant Director of Planning, Regeneration & Transport explained the importance of focusing on the strategic plans first so that when the funding came in, there were already projects identified that it could be applied to – strategy driving investment rather than funding.

 

The Assistant Director of Planning, Regeneration & Transport went through the first few slides of the presentation for members, highlighting the timeline of recent regeneration projects (in blue text) with the different funding streams set out underneath (in black text). This began with the Town Centre Masterplan in 2017, followed by the Town Investment Plan, which began connecting opportunities outside of the main town centre footprint. When the Levelling-Up money became available in 2021, this led to the regeneration model beginning to strain slightly as the Council had to make quick decisions as to where to spend the money. This led to investment beyond the town centre in the principal towns and opportunities to improve the visitor and leisure economy, post-pandemic. The trend of borough-wide investment had continued further with the Towns & Villages Programme and the Our Places Fund.

 

The Assistant Director of Planning, Regeneration & Transport explained that the Pride in Place programme was the next stage of this evolution. It would include a significant amount of revenue as well as capital funding which opened up a wider range of projects. The Pride in Place programme looked beyond the core town centre footprint and also proactively included input and collaboration with communities. The maps provided within the presentation set out geographically how the different projects and schemes fitted together.

 

Lorna Vertigan, the Head of Regeneration, provided a recap on the current situation with the Pride in Place programme. It would be a 10-year programme with a split between capital and revenue. It represented the first time the Council had a revenue allocation within a government-led grant scheme for regeneration. The consultation process, which IPSC had been updated on in September’s meeting, had completed and service were preparing the item to go before Cabinet on 17^th November 2025, ahead of submission of the “regeneration plan” to government on 28^th November 2025.

 

The Head of Regeneration referred to the request from members in the previous meeting for a clearer map displaying the boundaries of the government-defined area subject to the programme and explained that further detail and recognisable landmarks had been added to the map included within the presentation to help members orientate.

 

The Head of Regeneration talked members through the Roles & Responsibilities pie-chart included within the presentation, which set out the four clear roles to be played in the development of Pride in Place programme, three of which would sit with the Council and one, with the Neighbourhood Board:

 

·       Accountable Body – legal and financial (Council)

·       Delivery role – project leads for each intervention (Council)

·       Strategic Influence – where the money is spent and how the Neighbourhood Board is directing the money (Council)

·       Lead on engagement (Neighbourhood Board)

The Neighbourhood Board was an obligatory body, intended to put local people at the forefront of the regeneration plan. An independent Chairperson would be appointed and since the last meeting, the current Town Board and preliminary Neighbourhood Board had been approached to see if there were any members wishing to make an expression of interest in the Chair role. One nomination had been put forward and there would be a formal interview process to be conducted. If this person was not deemed suitable, a wider recruitment process would be launched.

 

The Neighbourhood Board must have a maximum of 20 members. This was prescribed by government, as were the types of member set out in black font in the presentation – namely, an MP, 2 local councillors and a senior representative from the police. The other suggested members (set out in blue font) were for guidance and were not prescribed. The Head of Regeneration confirmed that a number of people had already been identified but that there were some under-represented groups and demographics that service would be looking to engage with. Members were asked to put forward any suggestions they might have in this respect.

 

The Head of Regeneration explained to members that service was currently focusing on the range of interventions that the funding could be applied to. There were a number of pre-approved interventions which did not require a business case to be put forward to government and could be progressed straight away. For the proposal to Cabinet and the submission to government, service had set out the planned high-level interventions. Through consultation, service were proposing to focus on areas which don’t have easy access to alternative streams of funding and had therefore taken out areas such as housing and transport. The top six proposed interventions had been identified as:

 

·       Cohesion

·       Education and opportunity

·       Health and wellbeing

·       Regeneration, high streets and heritage

·       Safety and security

·       Work, productivity and skills

It was a government requirement to allocate a particular sum of money to each identified intervention but there would be flexibility and the ability to shift money around during the initial first four-year period. The detail of each project would be worked on over the next 6-12 months. Some funding would also need to be set aside to manage the programme and manage the Board. The Head of Regeneration explained that the allocations were currently indicative, in line with what the government had asked the Council to provide.

 

The Head of Regeneration explained that after submission of plans to government on 28^th November 2025, the period between December 2025 and March 2026 would be when government considered the submitted proposals. During this time, service would be working on project initiation documents and the details of each project.

 

The Chair invited members of IPSC to raise questions and queries on the presentation and in the ensuing question and answer session the following points were raised:-

 

Co-optee Ms M Jacques asked a question regarding the Neighbourhood Board and whether tenants would be able to join the Board. The Head of Regeneration confirmed that if there were tenant representatives within the relevant areas that were interested in being involved in the Neighbourhood Board, then service would engage with them. Ms M Jacques asked how tenants would be aware of this and the Head of Regeneration suggested that the geography of the areas and the relevant tenants associations were looked at.

 

The Governance Advisor asked the Head of Regeneration to explain the difference in the total on the Intervention Allocations slide of the presentation. This had been updated from the presentation included within the agenda pack. The Head of Regeneration explained that it had been decided to balance deliverability and push some of the spend back into later years of the programme, hence the difference of approximately £1 million in the overall figure in the presentation before members, compared to the figure in the agenda pack.

 

Councillor McKiernan asked whether the Neighbourhood Board could step in and not agree to the level of spending in certain areas or could request entirely different spending proposals. The Head of Regeneration commented that it would not be possible for the Neighbourhood Board to ask the Council to start plans from scratch as the government would have already agreed to those outline proposals. However, it could have some influence on how the different projects develop and there would be some flexibility on moving funding between projects. The Council would also have some influence over this and there would be a hope that the Neighbourhood Board would generally approve of plans as a preliminary board had already been involved in shaping them.

 

Councillor Thorp asked whether the plan would be for officers to put to their spending proposals to the Neighbourhood Board and the Board then consider and make decisions. The Head of Regeneration confirmed that the Council, being the experts on what would be deliverable, would be able to advise the Board but that it would be a collaborative and consultative process. Selection of the right Chair for the Neighbourhood Board would be imperative to ensure that someone had independent and objective oversight.

 

In a supplemental question, Councillor Thorp commented that he would not want the Neighbourhood Board to be seen as merely “rubber stamping” decisions already made. The Head of Regeneration provided assurance that this would not be the case and that there would be no point in having a Neighbourhood Board if the Council had a veto on decisions. The Council would need to be mindful of its role as accountable body but would not be forcing opinion.

 

Councillor Steele asked for more information on the projected administration costs. The Head of Regeneration explained that with this programme, the Council had been able to take some revenue costs straight out of the fund to support delivery and  administration costs. The Assistant Director of Planning, Regeneration & Transport explained that with wider capital programmes a financial mechanism could be utilised for recovering any costs associated with delivering projects.

 

Councillor Steele further commented that whilst he had seen the line of £248,000 in the allocations slide for “Programme Management/Delivery Costs” he wanted to know more specifically how much it was likely to cost to draw up contracts etc and whether it could go above this figure. The Head of Regeneration explained that the costs of contract management could depend on the type of project involved and confirmed that service could look to run an exercise to provide some indicative figures based on likely fees and officer time on similar projects.

 

Councillor Tinsley asked for an explanation as to why housing and transport had not been included in the list of proposed interventions. The Head of Regeneration explained that the decision had been made to focus on areas where it could generally be harder to find available funding streams.

 

In a supplementary question, Councillor Tinsley asked whether during the consultation process, transport had been considered. Councillor Tinsley expressed the opinion that opportunities may have been missed by excluding transport and housing and asked whether it should have been put to the Neighbourhood Board to decide which areas to prioritise? The Head of Regeneration explained that various workshops had already taken place with the preliminary Board to help shape the interventions which formed the proposal to government.

 

Councillor Allen raised a point in relation to the Roles & Responsibilities pie-chart and asked what service considered the role of IPSC to be within this programme? The Head of Regeneration commented that IPSC would sit within strategic influence and that the input of IPSC would be very much appreciated. Councillor Allen suggested that IPSC should be added to that quadrant of the pie-chart and the Assistant Director of Planning, Regeneration & Transport apologised for the omission and confirmed, for the record, that IPSC played an important part in strategic influence.

 

Co-optee, Ms K. Bacon wished to have a comment noted, that she found it interesting that the “Programme Management Costs/Delivery Costs” line in the Intervention Allocations slide was more than “Education and Opportunity”.

 

Co-optee, Ms M. Jacques referred to a previous similar project called Pathfinder which she had been involved in where unfortunately, money ran out. Ms M. Jacques asked how the Council would ensure that this would not happen with this programme? The Head of Regeneration responded by commenting that the government were now taking a longer-term view with these kind of regeneration projects. This would be the longest fund the Council had ever had and part of the function of the Neighbourhood Board would be to try and generate more income so that initiatives could be strengthened and could continue to be self -funded.

 

Councillor Clarke asked a question about the new town square project in her ward of Dinnington. The Chair explained that this did not directly relate to the area within the Pride in Place programme and asked service to contact Councillor Clarke directly on this issue.

 

Councillor Sheppard asked how the Council would make sure that the Neighbourhood Board represented the voices of the different communities which straddle the geography of the area in question. In response, the Head of Regeneration explained that there were already a number of groups and areas represented on the Town Board and on the preliminary Neighbourhood Board Through this, service could see where geographical and demographic gaps existed and were currently undertaking a gap analysis exercise. It was hoped that by utilising knowledge and connections from the Neighbourhood Service and members, the Council would be able identify additional representatives.

 

On this point, Councillor Williams stressed that when considering the Pride in Place programme, members needed to consider the area within the scheme as a whole and not just their own local wards. It was hoped that the interventions that come out of the programme would ultimately benefit the wider Rotherham geography.

 

Councillor Steele asked if a Chair had been identified for the Neighbourhood Board yet. The Head of Regeneration explained that expressions of interest had been requested from members of the current Town Board and preliminary Neighbourhood Board who had helped to shape the plans. There had been one formal approach, and the Council would respond to ask that person to set out how they meet the government criteria for the Chair. If that person was not successful, the post would be advertised more widely.

 

In a supplemental question, Councillor Steele asked if the Chair, when appointed, would then be involved in appointing the other members of the Neighbourhood Board. The Head of Regeneration confirmed that this would be the case.

 

In discussing the proposed recommendations, Councillor McKiernan asked members to consider if they would like an annual update to come to IPSC on progress under the scheme. Councillor Tinsley asked whether within that update, details of the new fund for Maltby could be included.

 

Andrew Bramidge, the Strategic Director for Regeneration & Environment explained that the timetable for the Maltby element of the scheme was slightly different. More detail on the scheme was expected from the government in early 2026 and the Council would need to respond, confirming acceptance of the geography of the scheme and providing details of the proposed Neighbourhood Board, by July 2026. Therefore, the Strategic Director for Regeneration & Environment proposed that the Maltby scheme be brought to IPSC for input in March/April 2026.

 

Councillor McKiernan made a further suggestion that the Chair of the Neighbourhood Board, once appointed, is invited to future updates to IPSC.

 

The Chair thanked officers for their input and members for the questions asked.

 

Resolved:-

 

(1)  That the contents of the presentation providing an update on the Pride in Place Programme for Rotherham Central 2025-2035 (formerly Plan for Neighbourhoods) be noted; and

 

(2)  That it is requested that service present an Annual Update to IPSC on progress against the Pride in Place scheme and that the Chair of the Neighbourhood Board is invited to attend these updates. Future updates should also include further detail on the recently announced extension of the Pride in Place scheme and funding to Maltby.

 

(Councillor Sheppard declared a personal interest in Minute No. 31 (Pride in Place Programme for Rotherham Central (previously Plan for Neighbourhoods) 2025-2035 on the grounds of being the former Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member involved in some of the funds mentioned in the presentation.)