Rotherham Council leader voices pride in social care support, library and balanced budgets

The leader of Rotherham Council has voiced his pride in the council’s efforts in social care support, the new indoor market and ‘balanced budgets’ in council funds.

Labour Councillor Chris Read has led the council since March 2015, and praised the social care support in Rotherham.

“We’ve done a lot of work over the last 10 years on social care,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

“I’m really pleased and proud of the quality of our services that we are offering to some of our most vulnerable residents,” he said.

The council recently announced its Homelessness Prevention and Rough Sleeper Strategy, aiming to reduce homelessness, increase suitable housing, and support people in difficult circumstances.

The council leader said homelessness has been “a particularly acute pressure for the community."

“A lot of the time, a lot of those people are living what you would think of as very ordinary lives. They were people who were in work last week, then something goes wrong at work, or their landlord changes their mind, and very quickly people are flung into difficult situations,” he added.

“Our ability to provide emergency accommodation to make sure that people have got a roof over their heads at home, we’ve increased that year on year. It’s really important.”

"Fortunate position" for Rotherham Council's finances

Despite the various ongoing projects that the council is working on, Cllr Read said: “I’d say we are in a relatively strong position on our finances compared to lots of other places.

“We are in the fortunate position of being able to project a balanced budget over this next year and the next two years.

“When we set our budget, that of course doesn’t mean that life is easy or that there’s loads of money kicking around, but it does mean that we’re not on the back foot.”

The leader said he is thankful that the council is “not having to make lots of cuts every year in the way that lots of councils still are, unfortunately.”

With the council’s regeneration plan in full swing, the town centre’s indoor market is set to have a new home, with the venue construction already underway.

Business owners were reluctant to give their thoughts on the council to the LDRS, amid uncertainty around the new market.

In response, Cllr Read said: “I completely understand that it’s a really unsettling time with a lot of uncertainty. Some of those traders will have been operating in the market for decades in the same places, paying broadly the same money, same environment, serving the same people.

“The reality is, if we just leave the market as it is, we know that the building structurally would get to the end of its useful life.”

In December 2020, Rotherham Council was awarded £12.6 million in government funding, as part of the Future High Streets Fund, for a market and library plan in the town centre. 

Sympathising with market business owners, the councillor said “just the act of knocking down the existing building and putting a new facility, however good the facility is at the end of that, changes their pattern and their footfall."

“We’ve halved the rents that we ask our traders to pay. We’ve tried to really reduce the costs that fall on them for this coming period where traders in the indoor market will be moved out,” he added.

Although no official date has been released yet, the council leader said that traders “should hear very soon” about when they will need to vacate the older indoor market building.

Understanding that this change in venue may cause income disturbances for businesses, he said “We’ve put some money aside to help them with additional marketing with digital marketing, that traders wouldn’t do ordinarily, but we know is increasingly the way that people are choosing to shop and find the places that they buy from. 

“We’re trying to do what we can to get them through what we know is a really difficult period in between now and then.

“In the end we really do think that we have a much better, more modern, permanent facility that meets the needs of traders better, and importantly helps to attract more people into the town centre as well.”