The Upper Don Trail Trust and Cycle Sheffield have joined forces to press for radically improved active travel routes near Hillsborough football ground.
We’re urging Sheffield City Council planners to insist on segregated cycleways and safer road crossings as part of a new retail development.
Developers Jaguar Estates have submitted revised plans for a retail centre bordering Penistone Road and Herries Road.
They want to build a mixed-use scheme including shops, warehouses, restaurants, a builders merchants and car repair centre.
The scheme would regenerate a largely derelict triangle of land between Penistone Road, Herries Road and Herries Road South.
It replaces an earlier scheme that received planning permission last year.
The original planning approval required the developers to provide a Travel Plan that would “encourage and facilitate less car dependent living”.
But we and Cycle Sheffield argue the developers have failed to deliver on this. We’re now urging a much stronger commitment to sustainable and active travel.
We are also pressing for restoration and public access to a historic waterway (the Wardsend Goyt) and rundown woodland at the north end of the site.
Well-designed and segregated cycleways would improve the Penistone Road cycle route into the city centre, and would link to a new section of the Upper Don Trail now being planned from Herries Road to Hillfoot.
So, what do we want to happen next?
We have objected to the revised planning application unless the following improvements are incorporated as specific conditions:
- The Penistone Road cycleway widened and segregated to a consistent five metres along the whole site frontage
- The footway on the Herries Road frontage to be widened to a consistent five metre width to accommodate a segregated cycleway as part of the site restoration, not simply noted as a future “improvement line” for others to provide
- The new vehicle accesses from the site to Penistone Road and Herries Road to be redesigned as continuous cycle-footways or ‘blended crossings’ which prioritise walking and cycling over exiting vehicles
- The traffic lights at the Penistone Road/Herries Road South junction to be converted to a Toucan Crossing at the expense of the developer and as a condition of the use commencing
- Details of how the woodland and mill goyt area is to be restored, what public access/amenity is to be provided and who is to be responsible for its ongoing management and funding should be provided before planning permission is granted not as an afterthought
- The development will need to include enhanced car parking restrictions for this area.
What is our active travel message to the developers and the council?
Simon Ogden, chairman of Upper Don Trail Trust, said: “We welcome the regeneration of this long derelict site but much has changed in the world over the last year.
“Developers now need to adjust to the new normal of prioritising active travel such as walking and cycling. It’s no longer acceptable just to focus on car access.”
Dexter Johnstone, of Cycle Sheffield, said: “Sheffield City Council need to ensure this development enhances rather than degrades cycling and walking provision in the area which is already patchy.
“They can do this easily by applying conditions which require the development to meet modern active travel standards.
“It is vital that all new developments in our city are designed to enable more people to travel actively.”
- Please click here to read or download the full objection submitted by UDTT and Cycle Sheffield
- If you would like to comment yourself on the planning application, please use this link to the planning portal and search for application 21/00234/FUL
