Rotherham town centre Forge Island development more wasted money.

I understand £47 million is being invested in the Forge Island development and £120 in Rotherham town centre altogether. Rather than organic development of Rotherham town centre, its boom bust. I have seen a similar development at Gainsborough that killed their old town centre.

https://www.newforgeisland.co.uk/

I’ve been documenting rodom Town Center the last few years since the lockdown and I didn’t realize about the forge Island so I’ve come down specially today to film it I came on my cycle from dington to RM to show I’m not against cycling in general I’m just against the agenda so what I’ll do is I’ll take you a walk around before Island development and show you what I can show you but this is the back end of it now on the right up and I’ll put a link in telling you more about it CU there’s actually a website link on there but I’ll put you a linking telling you more about it and I think in the link it mentions 47 million but my mp Alexander Stafford says it’s 120 million that’s been pumped into this so uh I’m a of the valley con consituent I’m not happy that all the investment seems to go into ROM they’re talking about a 10 million pound New Market development in dinnington but we’ve not even got past the consultation period and whether that ever happens is another thing but let’s have a walk around this area and just see what we can see what I’m actually going to have to do is I’m going to have to walk further around start the video again but the thing is my warning bells on this is I’ve seen a a similar development within Gainesboro where they developed an old industrial area and what they did is basically killed the rest of the town center and I don’t know if there’s going to be free parking in here or not but that would have been the well it was actually chargeable parking at Gaines I think but it wasn’t creating any more foot fill in the old town of Gainesboro so if anything I think this will probably damage ROM even more well let’s get around and have a look so it’s not easy to see on my screen but I’ll see what I can show you across here can stop the screen at any time and have a look but my big thing is to break away from R and brother counselors R the valley and go our own way be a bit more like Masset law where works up and rep for because we’re voting Tor and Tor is not the best outcome it’s far better than labor so we’re voting tour and we’re getting labor policies so these are some of the beautiful buildings around Ram then you can see an absolute gorgeous brother of menster so I will show you some of the area around it but you can see the footfall is absolutely dead beautiful Thursday afternoon about 2:00 there is a mark in Central rro so you got like the old 1960s but when you completely shut cities down like they’ve done this to Sheffield and completely destroyed Sheffield now the smaller businesses can succeed so the Sumer going off on this area around here at the moment as you can see now I don’t know if that’s a new constructed bridge over there which I suspect it possibly is I don’t want to go back to the 1950s but I don’t think you can run a conray solely on a service sector you’ve got to have clean modern industry that’s what creates all your wealth I just don’t know why we don’t make good what we’ve already got cuz all I think it’ll do is just shift Shoppers away from the old rodam town to this new area so you’ve got the old scar of Cinema used to have a beautiful organ in there I just want to show you some of the surround around it as well and you get a feel for it got the bus station over there love that Pub there the county beautiful architecture and then some old 1960 stuff being knocked down all them still got some nice old buildings [Music] [Music] got this beautiful Chapel on the bridge I taking you up to the well old part of the town but it’s been modernized but behind that you’ll find tesos now this is a ludic situation we’re having where Tesco was we had a big library in ROM they decide to knock it down and rebuild it somewhere else and I think it’s now being rebuilt again it’s just complete waste of money M rather than making good what we’ve already got so we’re now coming up to where the forge development is not Forge Island development and basically on one side you got the river Dawn and on the other side you’ve got the canal so it’s like a a junction but you can start to see some of the new development around here now and we’ll get along long a long it another lovely old building there don’t see too well on my SC I hope I C it okay we’re going to walk up towards where the train station is and walk along that side and I’ll give you probably a better view of the for development I know very little about this other than one quote is 47 million qu and then another one from my mp was 120 million but to say that dingon and anston where I live we getting 10 million quid our population is about uh 25,000 Ram’s real population is no more than 100,000 so say Ram’s four times bigger than our size then um we should be getting a quarter of the 20 million invested in our community so we should be getting closer to 30 million so you can see the canal up this side up down the other side to River Dawn I’m assuming it’s a river Dawn anyway I’m not the river rather could have got it wrong but so you got the train station but I think this is supposed to be finished by the end of 2024 and when you look at it there’s not even that much here at all so I don’t know how it’s being financed you know is the 47 million or the 120 million being paid by taxpayers if it is is it value for money I think we should have done more with rather the Town Center itself and what we should have been doing is developing modern indry in this area which I’ll keep repeating as a mantra so you can see the absolute gorgeous rather a Minster over there as a Sheffield I’m jealous that you’ve got such a fantastic Minster compare with our Cathedral that looks absolutely out this world that does but this is going to be another version of Legoland down here it could build much more beautiful buildings I mean we’re going backwards it’s like the music industry we produce every year we seem to produce worse and worse music and I think the same applies to our building industry the quality and everything now I don’t know if this is another one of these clab buildings or not where it CL insulation behind it and then on top of that insulation they just put brick slips on top I don’t know if it’s constructed like that or it is a a fully built brick building only time will tell it is a nice spot along the canal but I keep being told that I’m uh backward thinking now I’m actually forward thinking and I think what we’re doing is we’re going back into the stone angers with all these types of buildings I think we could have improved on the 19 century buildings that we had buildings that actually uplift the so right at the end of the video so I want you really to see that I want to show you the council buildings and why I have such a big issue with rather Metropolitan B because where we lived it was kibon rural District 25,000 people and we had very few offices for that and when you look at the offices for other Council you just wonder where it’s all going it’s just bureaucracy which is why we’ve got no small and mediumsized businesses they’re all being eroded by they over regulated corporations I mean everywhere looks so much nicer when the sun’s out like this what’s it going to be like when it’s uh cold wet rainy day another information board like to see more of these in all our towns telling us about history but industry seems to be a dirty word in the UK it’s not sexy enough for some people it’s by the time it was much sexed up a little bit less celebrity less Football let’s get back to a bit more reality this is a Floodgate for some reason to startop flooding elsewhere I’m not sure how that’s going to achieve its objective I just got to show you that you can just see the Minster I can’t see a thing on my screen so beautiful so are we should be building everything that actually uplifts the spirit just show you a bit around here and then let’s go and have a quick look at the council offices at the back end so you can see what I’m all about but have you noticed I’ve not seen one single policeman in rotheram today so these look like more Flats I think this is what they’re doing they’re tending to urbanize all our town centers Ram’s a smaller version of Sheffield but I mean that’s looking tacky already I don’t know how long long that’s been there let’s get back up onto this I think it’s Main Street in rodam and show you these massive Ram Council buildings so you can see the flood defense there we’re back into the ren police station or Town Center Police Station but never any plac walking around they don’t seem to work for as a place anymore they turn out at football matches get their easy overtime on us out there we never see them in our communities if there is a real issue with holigans well if you actually stop the years when they’re younger they don’t grow up to be oans but this is all Ram Council buildings look at it this is Absolut abolutely ridiculous we’re under some sort of maritime law in the UK we’re not under actual UK law anymore and we’re getting more and more of this International regulation coming from maritime law it’s it’s overtaken our common law of the land just want to see if I can get another angle on it but you can get where I’m coming from just it’s more and more job worse I’m not sure if this is the only offices for Ram Council I’m sure this probably some more they can see the police station so why why aren’t they serving us anymore why are they not in our communities all they seem to be doing is spying on 30 social media post now but you can see one of the beautiful building up there don’t know if I can see it on the screen to show it [Applause] [Music] you so that’s really just a quick recording so you’ve got the back end of the river coming around the back and then we’re walking back into I think it’s well gating rather I get wellgate and Westgate mixed up let’s see if we get one more view of this development from the corner so you can only just catch the glimpse of that building but you can see the massive flu station there that we never see police officers in our communities then you can see the the massive rodom B officers and like I said I think there may be more unless they’ve uh concised it but just more and more regulation jobs worths so I think this is the old post office building like I said we’re coming back into RAM Town Center so that’s quick walk around Forge Island development in rod