SpitalHillLocalVoice

The following statements have been drafted at open meetings in Burngreave Ashram.

Response to the Master Plan, and a New Proposal
1. We support regeneration for Spital Hill. This is already happening. Business has picked up during the last two years. The appearance of Spital Hill is already changing. All this is being done by renovating old buildings and developing organically. The historic character of the area needs to be retained as a distinctive part of the city. The plans will turn it into a monochrome, characterless area.

2. We want the present Burngreave New Deal work to be supported and expanded. We ask that there be policies that build on the growing strengths of the area, and give further development to the New Deal programme of 'Creating Enterprise', supporting Businesses running in the area.

3. We want the present rich and varied life of Burngreave to be maintained and enhanced. We want the local people not to be driven out by higher rents and council tax increases. We want to enhance not threaten the present diversity, multi-cultural and multi-racial character of the area, and the present low cost healthy living emphasis of many of the present shops, which directly reflects the local community. We want to support and expand the present multi-faith and not-for-profit enterprises. People come from the rest of the city because of these distinctive characteristics, to worship, shop and eat here.

4. The area has already been blighted by the introduction of the Masterplan and it is urgent that the Masterplan be withdrawn. The Masterplan needs to be replaced by a participative, co-operative, locally led, planning process produced by the planners and local organisations and local people. We suggest the New Deal be the lead partner in this.

Specific Proposals
We believe that the proposed new participative planning process will produce many new ideas. Several of those raised so far, which represent some responses to the master-plan, include the following.

Housing
We believe that the existing homes and apartments, particularly above the shops, should be renovated so that they are habitable. There are around 80 homes over shops that could be redeveloped. This should be done immediately. This will enhance the whole area, making it a residential as well as retail zone.

Old People’s Home
People have not been consulted about specific buildings. We do not believe that the city should withdraw the old people’s home from community use. We believe that the present offers from local education providers seeking alternative premises should be adopted.

Supermarket
The planned siting of the supermarket on Hallcar St. corner displaces present healthy and ethnic food outlets, replacing them with processed foods and pre-packed consumer goods. Supermarkets, often using outside employees, take money out of the area, and kills off local traders. [Rather, grants should be given to existing healthy eating shops.]

We believe that the question of a supermarket as a whole needs to be the subject of extensive public debate. There needs to be a SWOT analysis of the question. There are many local groups which would be happy to work on this. The relative value of a small supermarket as against smaller more specialist and general food stores need to be assessed in the light of experience elsewhere.

BurngreaveFood is a page where ideas for a Burngreave food strategy can get underway - to argue why supermarkets are not good for communities, particularly not regeneration areas, and what community-led alternatives there could be.

Researching the local economy
As part of a new, participatory process to assess the masterplan, we propose a local economy research project, in partnership with Sheffield Council.

The fundamental reason for such a project is caution. Local circulation of capital is a litmus test for levels of social capital in an area. Such local networks develop organically over time: they can be broken easily, but cannot be so easily developed. Nor can they be easily replaced by large-scale inward investment, such as supermarkets.

An example: the New Economics foundation compared the amount of money that came into a local area from two different sources: shopping for fruit and vegetables in a supermarket and from a local organic ‘box scheme’ (a fixed-price box of fruit and vegetables delivered to subscribers’ doorsteps each week.)

The results showed that every £10 spent with the box scheme was worth £25 for the local area, compared with just £14 when the same amount was spent in a supermarket.

The model used to assess this was participatory and locally-led – using the LM3 model of tracing the local money trail. We propose a similar project, working with local traders and organisations.