Tenants on 'forgotten' estate say new 'vision' brings hope

Three years after a £90m plan to redevelop Sheffield's Gleadless Valley collapsed a new "vision" for the area has been unveiled. But how do those living on the sprawling housing estate feel about the proposals and are they confident change will come after their previous disappointment?

"Look at that view, if this was anywhere else in Sheffield people would be desperate to live here."

Lara Joyce, secretary of Gleadless Valley Tenants and Residents Association, is stood in a tired-looking block of maisonettes with a 'thieves beware' sign hammered to the veranda, but she is right about the view.

This is Gleadless Valley, a sprawling estate of around 4,600 homes built in the 1960s.

Despite being a deprived area, the mix of dated maisonettes and tower blocks overlook a city vista, ancient woodland and playing fields.

An original masterplan unveiled in 2017 by Sheffield City Council promised mass housing redevelopment.

But by 2022 that £90m plan had collapsed, leaving residents "terribly frustrated".

Now there is a new vision to turn the area into a "successful suburb" over the next 10 years, featuring 12 "major projects" including new look shopping areas and parks, revitalised community buildings, updated council properties and 1,100 new homes.

The council says the proposals will "deliver lasting benefits for residents and the wider city" though admits it "still has work to do to secure the final funding for some of the projects".

In the meantime it said it had started work on a number of short-term projects based around consultation with residents, such as home refurbishments, upgrades to local centres, new play spaces and environmental clean-ups.

Outlining "the vision" the council also acknowledged the "disappointment" caused when the previous masterplan fell through.

TARA chair Matt Lawton said previously residents had felt excluded from the decision-making, but he believed this time it was a "very different playing field".

"I understand why residents might be negative, I was completely disheartened when the masterplan didn't happen," he said.

"But it very much centred around refurbishment and demolition, there was nothing with the green spaces and community centres, so it wasn't the whole picture.

"At the time, it felt very much like it was being done to us."

Ms Joyce agrees: "This feels such a positive move forward and I really want residents to feel the excitement it deserves."

Some people are a little more blunt about the original masterplan's shortcomings and its impact on residents.

"It has been a torturous process over many years," is how Green councillor Douglas Johnson describes it.

"Originally the scheme was envisaged as a big project, quite top-down, about demolishing and rebuilding housing, but now there's a lot more recognition we need to do the basics.

"That means housing repairs, empty the bins, sweep up the litter, show people we care about the area.

"Those things do make a difference, doing the basics in a visible way and reminding people there's good activity going on in the valley."

The Reverend David Middleton has been at Holy Cross Church in Gleadless Valley for 14 years and is equally frank.

"For so long the message was, you don't matter and your future doesn't matter," he says.

"There were some big flaws with the masterplan but people have to trust us. We want to listen so we don't just impose a middle-class ideal of what we want to give you.

"It is saying this is a place of hope, there is future. You don't just end up in Gleadless Valley and get forgotten."

Sheffield Chamber of Commerce president Alexis Krachai is chairing the regeneration board and Ms Joyce, Mr Lawton and Mr Middleton are members.

Matthew Nimmo, a regeneration specialist with the council, is candid the estate will need "quite a lot of public and private investment".

"Gleadless Valley is a big place and we're not going to regenerate the whole of it in 10 years, it's going to take time," he said.

"It already has a lot of the elements of a great place to live, with amazing ancient woodland and meadows, local shops and services, an active community and fantastic transport links to the city centre.

"It has a lot going for it, but the reality is that it's not a place where most people choose to live so we have to turn that around."

The estate also needs to stand on its own two feet and be economically sustainable, he said.

"This document very much harks back to the original ambition of Gleadless Valley.

"When it was built in the 1960s, it was heralded nationally and internationally as a pioneering project that combined modernist architecture with a beautiful, verdant setting and people came from all over the world to see it.

"We want to recapture that spirit of ambition and make this, again, a groundbreaking initiative. We want it to be a model that could be applied to estates, particularly in the north of England.

"There are a lot of estates in a similar position that have become run down and lacking in investment and we think there's a model we can develop here.

"It's not about trying to create a slightly better council estate, our ambition is that in 20 years time, Gleadless Valley will be a successful suburb and a place where people choose to live."

The Vision for the Valley proposals are due to go before Sheffield City Council's Strategy & Resources Committee for approval on 10 December.

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