How Orgreave has been transformed 40 years after infamous events of Miners' Strike

But while an official process for digging into allegations of a “militarised” police operation against striking miners is yet to begin, the land on which Orgreave colliery once stood has been changed beyond recognition in recent years through an interconnected series of massive construction projects.

The 740-acre site in Rotherham has become Yorkshire’s largest-ever brownfield development comprising of a village called Waverley and an associated Advanced Manufacturing Park home to blue-chip businesses such as McLaren, Rolls-Royce and Boeing.

While a huge amount of work has already taken place since outline planning permission for the changes was granted in 2011, the evolution of the site is continuing.

The Yorkshire Post was invited to take a tour of the development in the car of Peter Massie, the senior development manager for the Yorkshire and Central region for Harworth Group.

He explains the site is essentially split into three sections – the Advanced Manufacturing Park element, the residential side which is on its way to include 3,000 properties, and a vast area of green space.

The new Labour Government has set out a “brownfield-first” approach to housebuilding and Mr Massie says Waverley shows what can be achieved in such locations.

“This is an example of what can be done on brownfield sites which Labour have been talking about,” he says.

“It is something we should be massively proud of. I have been involved here for about three years so I am a relative newbie compared to some but it has moved on a huge amount even in that time.”

Harworth is the organisation behind the redevelopment of the Orgreave site and the company’s own journey has something of a parallel to the transformed area.

It was the property division of UK Coal, named after the Nottinghamshire village where the latter organisation was based. Now listed on the London Stock Exchange and with ambitions of becoming a £1bn business by the end of 2027, it owns, develops and manages over 14,000 acres of land on around 100 sites across the North and Midlands.

The Waverley scheme is one of the company’s flagship regeneration projects and the company’s headquarters sit on the edge of the development.

As we set off in Mr Massie’s electric car to tour the giant site, there is an almost immediate reminder that developments of this scale do not always go as smoothly as we pass the shell of an unfinished new Marriott hotel.

Building work unexpectedly stopped last year and has not restarted. The situation is outside of Harworth’s control as it had sold that section of land to a developer called Stapleford Ventures in 2021 who had been leading on the hotel project.

Mr Massie says that as master developer for the wider Waverley development, Harworth would like to see the building completed as soon as possible and will keep those living and working locally updated on progress.

The car turns up into the Advanced Manufacturing Park (AMP) section of the development where around 2,500 people are employed across almost 100 companies.

There is the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, which is a partnership between the University of Sheffield and Boeing; the UK Atomic Energy Authority which is engaged in trying to turn nuclear fusion into a sustainable energy source and a McLaren technology centre.

The site has become something of a cluster for scientific research and we pass builders hard at work at transforming the final remaining pockets of space in the park into new industrial space.

A new headquarters for Sheffield firm Technicut, which makes solid rotary cutting tools for the aerospace industry, is being created.

Mr Massie credits the University of Sheffield for helping to kickstart the park, backed by the support of Rotherham Council.

“The key has been sticking to the vision of advanced manufacturing. It has been massively successful and once it got going it has attracted other occupiers. People within the same supply chain want to be next to each other.”

Indeed, the concept has proved such a success that last year then-Chancellor Jeremy Hunt named South Yorkshire as the country’s first Investment Zone, with a specific focus on advanced manufacturing.

There have been plenty of challenges for developers of commercial property in the past few years but Mr Massie says the AMP has proved resilient.

“Demand has been fantastic over the last couple of years,” he says. “Everybody slowed down during Covid but here it was quite a short-term thing as businesses involved in manufacturing need to be on site. It is still a hands-on process.

“The biggest issue was the cost inflation following Covid and the war in Ukraine. It made it difficult to speculatively build but generally the bespoke nature of the sites we were building for were for business signing up in advance.”

The car heads in the direction of the residential side of Waverley, passing a local pub called The Winter Green as well as an area of woodland where it is eventually hoped a railway station can open.

Last autumn, £1m of public funding was set aside to assist the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority to develop a business case for the potential station, which is intended to join the existing line between Sheffield and Rotherham.

Hundreds of homes have already been built and occupied but there is plenty of construction still taking place around the site on new properties.

While outline planning permission was granted for up to 3,890 homes, Massie says Waverley is now due to end up with around 3,000 properties as a consequence of both changes to planning rules and a demand for family homes on the site; 21 per cent of the completed development will be classed as affordable housing.

Harworth has worked with eight housebuilding companies to help ensure the site does not look too uniform, with each street and area having its own individual character.

Work is also under way on the creation of Highwall Park, which will run through the site across 20 acres and include playgrounds and sports facilities.

Despite having its own successful primary school and its mix of impressive modern houses and flats, it is fair to say Waverley is still very much a community under construction.

At the heart of those plans is a new village centre called Olive Lane which is in the process of being built.

It will have shops, a gym, restaurants and cafes, a supermarket and a medical centre. Mr Massie says it will be “massively important” to the evolution of Waverley as a community and helped cement it as an attractive place to live and work.

He says the site is helping inform other Harworth developments across the country.

“Waverley has been an inspiration for other sites and in all honesty a chance to learn some lessons.”

As a company, Harworth has also called for changes to the planning system to allow schemes like Waverley to be delivered more quickly.

Its first call in a pre-election “blueprint for growth” report was for a “refocused planning system” including a regional planning regime for large-scale regeneration schemes with improved flexibility and more resources for local authorities.

Mr Massie says despite a “fantastic relationship” with Rotherham Council, there have been challenges to getting schemes within Waverley approved in a timely fashion due to how the system operates and the workloads facing planning officers.

One scheme for the site awaiting a planning decision is a proposal for a ‘landmark’ new office building close to Olive Lane. Mr Massie says he is unable to comment on recent reports that the property could ultimately be a new headquarters for Harworth.

It is clear there will be plenty of construction work happening across the site in the years ahead, but the finish line for the bulk of the wider project is starting to come into view.

As his car takes us back towards Harworth’s current office, Mr Massie reflects on the journey the Orgreave site has taken to becoming Waverley.

“It will be a completed community by the 50th anniversary,” he says.

“It is massively exciting to be involved in and everyone is really proud of what we are doing – you want to see the process through from start to completion."