Why Rotherham's impressive story of recovery is only just beginning: Chris Read
Forty years ago, the site that is now Rotherham’s Advanced Manufacturing Park (AMP) was home to a very different story. In 1984, Orgreave was the scene of one of the most bitter and violent clashes of the Miners’ Strike, where the state created an injustice that still resonates around the world today.
But in 2017, I was speaking to an audience in the same place, welcoming the announcement that day that McLaren Automotive would be locating part of their production facility there and building supercars.
Today, our Advanced Manufacturing Park is a place defined not by conflict, but by industrial success and future opportunity.
Some of the most senior business community figures in Rotherham and the wider North of England will gather at the AMP today, to discuss how we can grow the North’s economy and improve life opportunities for the people who live here. We are meeting together in Rotherham because they recognise the story that has unfolded here over the past two decades: a story of rebuilding, reinvention, and ultimately, results.
I opened my remarks that day in 2017 by saying it wasn’t necessarily what I expected to be doing as the leader of Rotherham Council. Perhaps many people felt the same sentiment when our community was named by the Northern Powerhouse Partnership as having one of the fastest recent rates of productivity growth anywhere in the country.
Between 2004 and 2023, Rotherham recorded a 63.9 per cent rise in Gross Value Added (GVA) per hour worked. That’s the strongest performance of any local council or sub-region in the North of England, and it didn’t happen by accident.
Rotherham’s recovery is built on serious investment, long-term thinking, and effective partnership between public and private sectors. It is proof of what can happen when a place is given the tools, and the belief to shape its own future. The AMP has been central to that change.
Over two decades, the area and the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre has attracted over £300m of private investment from companies like Rolls-Royce, Boeing and McLaren, and trained over 2,000 young people at the AMRC Training Centre - providing the workforce for over 300 small and medium-sized businesses across the area.
Most recently, the AMRC has been providing research and development support on Small Modular Reactors for Rolls-Royce SMR, integral to how we keep the lights on, get bills down and cut our carbon emissions.
But the AMP’s value goes beyond its biggest tenants. It has helped to create a cluster effect locally as well as wider impact across the North raising productivity, creating supply chain jobs, and through the AMRC Training Centre providing world class apprenticeships.
What’s more, its success is helping to drive confidence in the wider regeneration of Rotherham from investments in the town centre to new housing.
Of course we’ve still got plenty to do. Average wages and skills levels in Rotherham are still far too low, ill health and economic inactivity far too hight. Austerity hit us hard. So we’ve ambitious plans to deliver a new mainline station for the first time in 40 years.
By enabling up to 1,200 high-value jobs, supporting plans for up to 3,000 new homes, and delivering a £52 million boost to the local economy from new employment prospects, our Gateway Station will act as a catalyst for investment, housing growth and regeneration.
It also has the potential to secure up to £1.2 billion in private investment across the wider South Yorkshire Investment Zone, with Rotherham perfectly placed at the heart of the Don Valley corridor leading to our neighbours in Sheffield, working hand in hand with South Yorkshire’ Mayoral Combined Authority, to propel advanced manufacturing and establishing Rotherham as a hub for research and industry.
Rotherham Gateway will anchor Rotherham’s wider regeneration ambitions. Complementary to the town’s existing local Central train station, it will serve as a major integrated transport hub, strengthening connections between people and industry locally, regionally and nationally, particularly along the Sheffield-Leeds economic corridor. That’s on the back of Rotherham recently being ranked as the UK’s best commuter town.
None of this happened overnight. It took patient investment, offering long term policy certainty and partnerships that built on our strengths. It also took courage from the community, from the council and from those who chose to back Rotherham when others did not share the same belief.
As a council, we’ve redoubled our efforts to ensure local people benefit from economic opportunities. In 2021, we received accreditation as a real living wage employer by the Living Wage Foundation. Our Employment Solutions team have supported more than 1,250 to get into or stay in work, since 2020. We’re building 1,000 new council homes and spending more than £30 million extra from council procurement in the local economy compared to four or five years ago.
Meanwhile, our 2025 Children’s Capital of Culture programme and our Skills Street initiative, in partnership with Gulliver’s Valley, are helping young people gain valuable skills and work experience by connecting them with local businesses and training opportunities.
Rotherham didn’t deliver sustained productivity growth because of luck. It did so because people came together around a shared mission: to create skilled jobs, rebuild a place scarred by the deliberate undermining by the Thatcher government of its traditional industries with no plan to replace them, and give the next generation a reason to stay.
As our politicians look for answers to the UK’s need for growth after years of economic stagnation, they could do worse than to learn some of our lessons.
If it can happen here, then – as they say at the New York Stadium – it can happen anywhere.
Chris Read is leader of Rotherham Council