To receive a statement from the Leader of the Council in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 9.
Minutes:
The Leader presented his statement and reported on good news with regards to funding. Two of the Council’s three Levelling Up Fund bids had been successful for the Town Centre and Leisure and Skills packages totalling an investment of almost £40 million pounds. These were great projects that should generate economic benefits for residents right across the Borough.
Being largely familiar with the town centre proposals, the Leisure and Skills bid was a creative package that would deliver real economic benefits in communities that needed them:-
· Wentworth Woodhouse would transform its Riding School and Stables to create new hospitality and visitor centres as part of its £130m masterplan to bring new life to one of the country’s finest and largest historic houses.
· Thrybergh Country Park would embark on the first stage delivery of its masterplan focused on outdoor education and wellbeing and the creation of a new destination waterside café.
· Close to the Town Centre, Magna would create a suite of new exhibitions which would focus on science, nature and natural materials.
· Rother Valley Country Park would embark on the first stages of a new masterplan focused on physical activity and adventure creating new hospitality and play facilities.
· A new Skills Village at Gullivers Resort focusing on training, development, and accreditation within the hospitality and leisure sector.
· Bridging the gap between school and employment, Maltby Academy Trust would invest in the redevelopment of the former Maltby Grammar School to create an incubator space for training, apprenticeships, and start up support in the leisure and hospitality sectors
Apart from the value to the community, to those that receive training, and the businesses that would be started, it was expected the schemes would deliver more than 100 local jobs. The Council would continue to plug away to secure the investment that communities deserved.
Moreover a bid to National Lottery Heritage Fund had been successful and Rotherham had been awarded £250,000 on behalf of a Northern Consortium which represented a £80,000 return and would fund the cultural programme that would support the celebrations for the Women’s Euros next summer.
The UK Community Renewal Fund bid for Children’s Capital of Culture was successful providing £1.8m to develop a pilot of the skills and talent development strand of the programme with nine consortium partners, so of course it was great to get Government backing for this exciting and innovative programme to benefit young people.
Everyone who worked on these bids was thanked. If only the Government would fund core services with the enthusiasm it announced grant programmes Rotherham would be in a much better place.
More good news too regarding Rotherham’s green spaces. Rother Valley Country Park had collected its first Green Flag Award alongside Clifton, Greasbrough and Ulley Parks that have received one of the coveted awards – the mark of a quality park or green space. This was testament to the hard work and dedication of those who look after the parks.
Finally, Covid had not gone yet and everyone needed to keep well this winter.
The figure as of yesterday was 555.1 per 100,000 and Rotherham was ranked 19th worst in England, with Covid patients in hospital rising by 20% in the last week. Those pressures really were showing in Rotherham Hospital and, contrary to the assertions some had made, the country was very far from being normal.
A period of not more than ten minutes was allowed for questions.
Councillor Bennett-Sylvester welcomed the recognition for green flags for Rotherham parks, but made reference to those Members who came to today’s meeting on public transport and asked if the South Yorkshire Mayoral Authority was looking carefully at bus services to areas like Dinnington and other outlying areas and the potential they had.
The Leader agreed there needed to be a drive towards some improvements around bus services. There was a shortage of drivers putting pressure on bus operators making worse the economic problem. There would always be pressure on services and there were a number of measures coming from the Government about bus service improvement plans which the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority agreed.
This would provide some practical improvements at bus stops and live journey and better webpage information some of which would be funded by ourselves and some funding from Government.
A new customer charter which governed responsibilities would be agreed with bus operators and hopefully improve on poor quality service.
There would also be significant investment for improvements to bus lanes and junctions which would help to tackle some of problems with being stuck in traffic.
In excess of £70 million had been secured to make improvements that could be delivered over the next few years. Further funding had also been sought from Government to cap fares which was a whole raft of packages to make travelling on public transport as easy and reliable as possible.
A decision was still to be made on franchising as this would require a significant amount of investment including research so this was still a live debate. With some funding from Government this would give aspirational regulation for buses driving through quality in the future.