Staveley residents slam council plans for town centre regeneration as “waste of money” and call for business owners to have their say

Derbyshire Times

A group of Staveley residents have criticised Chesterfield Borough Council’s plans for town centre regeneration as “waste of money” - and called for business owners to have their say on the proposals.

Transcript

00:00 I'm here in Staveley today to speak to members of the Staveley Improvement Team to get their views

00:04 on the latest plans for the regeneration of the town centre published by Chesterfield Borough

00:07 Council. It's one of the projects funded by the Staveley Town Deal. The Town Deal was won for

00:13 Staveley by Lee Rowley MP but it's run by Chesterfield Borough Council who set up the

00:18 Staveley Town Deal Board. There are 16 members of the board and only one is a resident of Staveley.

00:25 The Staveley Improvement Team, of which I'm a member, asked for one seat on the board and we

00:31 got the support of the then minister, it was Deanna Davison. She wrote a letter to Chesterfield

00:37 Borough saying that they should let Staveley Improvement Team have a seat on the board

00:41 but they refused, they still refused. The thing is, yes Staveley residents do want the area

00:49 rejuvenated but they voted for that but they haven't been included in any of the plans.

00:58 They haven't asked any of the shop owners about the plans. It needs to be recognised that Staveley

01:05 is growing. We're set to have another 3,500 homes built here over the next 15 years. That should

01:12 result in our population growing, if you use the ONS figures, by 2.4 people per house that will

01:19 mean an increase of 8,400 residents. There's also a formula to work out local expenditure and the

01:27 local expenditure that will result out of those new households is £86 million a year which could

01:34 be spent locally. We want the money to be spent in our town so we need a town centre where local

01:41 people can spend their money. It means we need a larger town centre. There's also the proposal for

01:47 the CSRR, Chesterfield Staveley Regeneration Route and I'm told, I've been told it more than once

01:53 over the years, but I'm told the decision is imminent and it's looking positive. It might

02:01 finally get built. When that road's built that'll open up the Staveley Works site for development

02:09 but it also means that we won't have the through traffic through Staveley town centre anymore.

02:14 So there's a golden opportunity to reopen the high street one way and I think it should go that way

02:23 so you'd come off Market Street and go down and initially until the CSRR is built it should just

02:33 reopen for buses but we desperately need people to see Staveley and we've got some lovely buildings

02:39 in Staveley but if you want footfall you need visibility. You could have on the high street,

02:47 you could have enough room for a bus to travel down and you could have enough room for wide

02:51 pavements and a cycle path. The reopening of the high street would address the major problem

02:58 currently for our town centre which is visibility. Look at the roundabout we've got at the top of

03:03 Barnfield Close. It's like a pool of concrete that somebody's thrown cobblestones in and then compare

03:10 that to the roundabout at Hornsbridge with the growth sculpture. I'm not saying that you know

03:18 obviously it's far smaller but that's our gateway, that's our welcome to Staveley. A load of concrete

03:24 cobblestones chucked in a pool of concrete, no artwork. Chesterfield Borough Council ignores

03:30 Staveley so Chesterfield in bloom, nothing in Staveley. Firework display in Chesterfield, we had

03:37 to put our own one on here. Remembrance Day, there's one outside the town hall paid for by Chesterfield

03:43 Borough. We're left to organise our own here whether you go from Queen's Park Sports Centre,

03:50 Queen's Park itself, all this stuff coming up from the station, the Pomegranate Theatre, the

03:55 Northern Gateway, Elderway, all these things that have been done in Chesterfield have had

04:00 CBC money in them. We make up 20% of the borough. We're providing money to Chesterfield, nothing is

04:08 coming the other way. Then they're going to spend money to demolish the toilets at the end which

04:16 have been closed for years and the market store and they want to build a building, a new building.

04:23 That started off being a single-storey building, now they've called it a pavilion which is a

04:27 peculiar name to use because it implies a temporary building or a sports building but anyway

04:33 and when you say what's it for, they don't know. Sometimes it's retail, sometimes it's officers,

04:39 sometimes a waiting room, sometimes a cafe, sometimes a library. We think the library ones

04:44 are most likely so we've got a library on Hall Lane but Derbyshire County Council have been offered

04:52 to have space in the new building. Well what will they then do? Rent the new building,

04:59 close the library and sell it and where will the money go? Matlock. Where will the rent money go

05:07 from this new building? Chesterfield. Where was the money designed to improve? Staveley.

05:13 How does that help Staveley when Matlock and Chesterfield both get the money?

05:19 Then you've got the market square which I've shown you the pictures of.

05:22 They're going to revamp it. It's their square. They already own it. If it needs revamping,

05:30 they should program that ordinarily and budget for it. The artist's impressions are just ludicrous.

05:37 It's not the size of St Mark's Square in Venice as that artist seems to believe. In these buildings

05:46 that Chesterfield Borough is saying they want to build, they seem to be taking no account of

05:51 climate change. You need buildings that are going to reflect climate change. Green buildings that

05:59 reflect that. So we need something like with verandas that are going to be able to shade

06:04 people from sunshine or protect you from the rain. This is a golden opportunity to build buildings

06:08 that are green, photovoltaic cells on them etc. We suggested to them, to Chesterfield Borough,

06:15 that the priority is to demolish all these buildings and then you could build a stack

06:22 or a box park development. It's under the bridge at Gateshead. There's a Roker have got a stack

06:28 development in Sunderland. There's one being built in Bishop Auckland. There's one being built in

06:32 Durham City. That is cheap, it's temporary, it's affordable and it changes the image of somewhere.

06:45 And it also would result in footfall. That footfall would then persuade the private sector

06:52 to invest in permanent buildings and those buildings could then be sold, the container

06:56 buildings could then be sold. They need to listen to the shop owners, to the business owners in this

07:03 area, at what they think. I'd like you to look around this square, the condition it's in.

07:10 You've got lights, you've got four lights out. It's big black in here. Five lights. You've got

07:16 a cone there that's been wrapped around here for how many weeks? In 2026 the board will wind up

07:26 and all those people will go away. The residents will be left with the mess and the waste of money

07:33 and a town centre that's still not fit for purpose. Chesterfield Borough Council said

07:37 there is still time for people to comment on the updated proposals. Council staff have already been

07:41 engaging directly with businesses in Staveley Town Centre with visits to individual premises

07:45 and a drop-in session is also taking place between 1pm and 3pm on Wednesday November 8th at the

07:50 Healthy Living Centre.

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