£8.5 million jobs boost for Rotherham

ROTHERHAM'S battle against the recession has been handed an £8.5 million double boost with news of 90 metalwork jobs and the development of a new police training and major crimes centre.

South Yorkshire Police has confirmed that it is developing a £7 million centre for critical incident staff and specialist training facilities at the Callflex Business Park, Manvers, to be opened by December next year.

Meanwhile, staff at the nearby Metalysis metals plant have been boosted this week by a £1.5 million grant from Yorkshire Forward, which will go towards hiring a range of staff from research scientists and process development engineers to sales staff.

The welcome news for the local economy came as Rotherham Investment and Development Office revealed that since April, 149 companies have moved to Rotherham, expanded, started up here or relocated within the borough.

As a result, 908 jobs have been created and 978 safeguarded.

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A RIDO spokeswoman said that Rotherham's one-year and three-year survival rates for start-up businesses stood at 95 per cent and 85 per cent—well ahead of the national figure.

While high-profile job losses have hit steelmaker Corus and high street giant Woolworths, other firms have created dozens of new jobs, including 100 at Sandvik Engineering, 95 at the Pegler plumbing chain, 80 at Malletts Security and 26 at town centre store B&M Bargains.

The RIDO spokesman added: “Rotherham is benefiting from hundreds of millions of pounds worth of business investment across the borough.”

South Yorkshire Police's new centre at Manvers will be just a stone’s throw from its existing public order training base and will combine 21st century training facilities with new bases for critical incident teams and specialist investigation units like the Cold Case Review Team.

Training staff will move from the force's existing training centre in Ecclesfield while major incident teams will be transferred from across Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley.

Assistant Chief Constable Mark Whyman said: “We aim to continue to improve the service we provide to communities and we need well trained, well motivated and well led staff to achieve that."”

Just up the road at Farfield Park, Metalysis has been given the go-ahead to create 90 highly-skilled jobs as the company gears up to develop a pioneering plant to produce titanium powders for worldwide markets. 

Delighted chief executive Mark Bertolini said: “Yorkshire Forward has again given us essential financial support as we enter a critical project, by the end of which we expect at least another 90 people to be sharing in our continued progress."”