LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Recklessness with our cash points to desperate future

I dread to think how scary that reality is for our small town centre traders. What a parlous state of affairs — the loss of six significant, town centre businesses in just over a year, the prospective loss of up to 30 more; town centre buildings/sites burnt out, in disrepair, unfinished or abandoned so our town centre is likened to a war zone; and key town centre projects substantially over-budget and delayed — with businesses laying the blame at the council’s door.

I recall the hype about the re-paving and new flower pots to make our town centre pedestrian precinct more attractive to shoppers and prospective new businesses. Has RMBC done any project and financial evaluations? Any lessons learned reviews? Any reports to its management board and councillor cabinet?

The most basic evaluations, reviews and reports would show that the objectives of this project have not been realised, there’s been zero return on the investment. It’s not paving, flower pots and pocket parks that attract new businesses and improve customer experience, it’s a decent selection of small, attractive shops/coffee shops/bistros/restaurants with parking outside/on-hand, in a clean, compact area and a vibe that prompts pleasant emotional customer reactions — as a walk along Neill Street, Ecclesall Road and Wickersley etc would reveal. And Rotherham’s town centre mark against this metric is? Yes — Rotherham is shockingly 364th out of 374 in the annual prosperity index.

The longstanding Treasury return-on-investment metrics are long overdue for change as they mean disadvantaged areas like Rotherham rarely qualify for government investment — that’s where we benefited from EU matched-funding investment, but the democratic vote was to leave the EU, so we lost that.

But aren’t these all the more reason why RMBC and our councillors should be super-vigilant in ensuring the £84m High Streets and Levelling Up cash (our income/business tax) and our council tax and business rates cash are targeted on projects with objectives that really will level-up our town’s business activity, revenues and customer experience, thus achieving best return on our investment? And not use our reserves to relieve private investors of any risk in their investment?

We’ve too many RMBC ‘turkey’, ‘flagship’, over-sized, wrongly located, vanity projects that were/are over-priced and then over-budget, late with no penalty on contractors and poor, if any, returns on investment — the ineptitude of our senior, RMBC officers and councillors displayed in these ‘turkeys’ and their recklessness with our hard-earned cash is breathtaking.

We deserve and need much better.

C Peters, Brecks