Council does what it pleases over green belt

In the Rotherham growth plan 2015-2025, a whole swathe of green belt along the side of the A57 is going to be used for an industrial estate.

The excuse for this is that it will bring hundreds of jobs to our area — the wording itself may not be a lie, it may bring hundreds of jobs to our area.

The lie is that the jobs will be for people of our area.

This plan is produced by the Sheffield City Region Strategic economic plan.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the area they are after is close to the M1 junction 31 and within easy commute.

The plan talks of providing quality housing provision for all sections of the community.

Dinnington is earmarked for a substantial amount of house building on our green belt, built by private developers.

These houses will not be for the poorest members of our community, they won’t be for low rents or even low-priced.

This growth plan goes on to promise 10,000 new jobs and 750 new businesses over the next five years.

How much pie in the sky can one report promise?

In the section Priority Projects and Programmes, we have the newly named Todwick North site — it states “major site: Todwick North is an excellently located site with minimal investment requirements that could prove a significant general employment use development.

“There are strong links to the motorway network and the strategically important Sheffield Rotherham economic corridor/innovation district.

“This site is also well placed to take advantage of the HS2 station at Meadowhall.”

For all this political speak, read “cheap to develop because it is flat agricultural land”.

For strong links to motorway, read “easy commute from Sheffield”.

For Sheffield economic corridor, read “enterprise zone where businesses get tax breaks to encourage them to come”.

They won’t be new businesses, they will be businesses that move from other areas, predominantly Sheffield to get the perks for three years then move on. They will bring all their skilled workers with them, and might, if we are lucky, hand out one or two low skilled low paid jobs to the locals.

They won’t spend money on training local youngster skilled jobs.

Dinnington and Anston have several industrial estates.

In Dinnington alone, there at least 22 units empty, one of which is an extremely large warehouse unit.

We have a minimum of over 52 acres of industrial land for sale — most of this has road structure and services already in place.

The Rotherham growth plan is not for the benefit of the people of Dinnington or Anston — building a large industrial site at the side of the A57 will cause more misery than create jobs.

Every evening we have a mass migration down Todwick road onto the A57 of the majority of workers from the industrial estates going home to other areas. Despite the new traffic island and dual carriageway there is still a bottleneck at what was Todwick crossroads — imagine how much worse that will be with an industrial estate there.

Instead of Rotherham Borough Council, spurred on by Sheffield, robbing us of our green belt and agricultural land, they should be trying to fill our empty units and sell the land already available and ready for use.

They should make sure these companies employ local workers, instead of being fly-by-night companies who having bled all the perks out of the system move on to pasture green.

On Monday January 12, at our town council meeting, we agreed to oppose the building of any type of industrial on our green belt on the so called Todwick North site.

I am sure as usual our protest will fall on deaf ears, because when Rotherham say they are consulting with the public we can read “Say what you want but we will please ourselves.”   

Dave Smith, Victoria Street, Dinnington