LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Academy award for under-performance

Asked how she would personally level-up her area, she somewhat ironically used every current Government buzzword there was. Investment in education, upskilling people that are employed, addressing health inequalities and good health care. In fact, anyone who was listening passively would have assumed Michael Gove was on television speaking in a Rotherham accent.

What was missing was actually a critique of her performance as current Cabinet member for jobs and the local economy at Rotherham council. Looking at her own council ward of Hoober as a prime example, which takes in the relatively deprived Brampton and the former site of Cortonwood colliery, given a large pot of Levelling Up Fund money to utilise, did she direct the money into projects tackling the inequalities and lack of opportunities she so passionately identified?

Millions of pounds the former colliery villages across Rotherham borough desperately need. No, she did not. Cllr Lelliott used the opportunity to fund a new visitor centre at (privately-owned) Wentworth, along with nice new cafés at Thrybergh and Rother Valley country parks. Levelling Up in action Rotherham Council style – a few dozen part-time minimum wage jobs created, but where is her actual plan to tackle the inequalities she identified? How many lives in Brampton will be transformed by the Wentworth plan? How will Wath be levelled-up by building a new library? Will people in Kiveton and Swallownest now be healthier because Rother Valley park is getting a new car park?

Unfortunately, that is the crux of the problem and why levelling-up will fail. There is no real vision to transform the local economy from local leaders, just a lot of criticism of others and trying to place the blame elsewhere, sprinkled in with a few vanity projects and digging up of pedestrianised streets with rows of closed shops in Rotherham centre, to replace them with pedestrianised streets of closed shops. At least councillors can admire the new brick work of the empty boarded up streets when they attend Town Hall.

There is so much waste on inconsequential projects. Bus lanes, cycle lanes, green corridors (whatever they are), tram-train to a part of Rotherham no one visits, public realm improvements in Rotherham centre etc. Large warehouses and logistic centres are built, supported by the council’s local plans, creating lots of lower paid jobs. None of this will level-up the economy and society, but Rotherham leaders and the South Yorkshire Mayor praise themselves on their efforts on spending literally hundreds of millions of pounds on projects no one wants or needs — then blame the Government for the lack of levelling-up.

Cllr Lelliott is right, the Government is to blame for the lack of levelling-up, but not for the reason she states. It is because they needed to by-pass the ineffective councils and councillors like her and direct the money into projects that really will tackle inequalities, such as direct investment and grants into helping private-sector technology, science, green energy and research & development industry establish in the area. We need skilled jobs first and foremost.

I almost think Cllr Lelliott maybe recognises this, but she does not actually know how to go about doing it and how in her role she should be leading on this. Which is of course a worry when she is in charge of Jobs and the local economy, without a background in business development or industry. I advise her to look at the success of the Advanced Manufacturing Park (be under no illusion, if this was Rotherham Council-led there would be a couple of large warehouses at best on the site) to see that you need to let industry and research lead the way, not council planners.

Tom Paterson, Whiston