Lib Dems welcome plans for Moorfoot’s future

Sheffield Lib Dems have this week welcomed and approved plans for Sheffield City Council to vacate the Moorfoot building as soon as possible, a move which will save the council £2,500,000 in operating costs every year, and supports long term plans for housing in the area.

The Moorfoot building has been significantly underutilised since the pandemic, and was found to be unsustainable to continue operating as normal, according to a report heard by the Council’s Finance Sub-Committee.

Rising wholesale gas prices have ballooned the cost of powering and heating the Council’s estate, which rose from £5m in 2020/21, and may increase to £20.7m in 2023/24 if nothing is done to downsize.

Council staff currently working in the Moorfoot building will be redeployed to offices in the Town Hall or Howden House, which are also currently underoccupied.

Councillor Shaffaq Mohammed, leader of Sheffield Liberal Democrats spoke on the proposal, saying “I would have liked this to be done much earlier, when the move to hybrid working was made permanent. We have been under occupying these buildings since the start of the pandemic, which was an incredibly bad use of taxpayer money from day one.

With the council overspending by £18m, when we are offered £2m worth of savings with very little downside, it’s something that we absolutely must do.

I welcome this proposal and wish the officers luck, and hope that now they have approval that they can get on with it and vacate the building as soon as possible, rather than waiting for the start of the new financial year in April. Any savings that we can realise now will help to plug the huge financial overspend the Council’s currently facing.”

As well as representing savings to the council which will safeguard key services, the proposals also support the Council’s long-term plan for the Moorfoot area.

Under the draft Local Plan currently progressing through the Council’s committee system, the Moorfoot area will provide around 2,180 new homes over the next two decades.

These are expected to be predominantly smaller one- and two-bedroom flats and houses, which will help to tackle Sheffield’s housing emergency by allowing opportunities for under-occupied households to downsize. It is hoped this will increase availability of in-demand family homes outside the city.

Whether the Moorfoot building will be renovated or demolished to provide the planned housing is currently uncertain.

The housing plans will come as good news to shops on the Moor and Moor Market, who are likely to see an increase in customers from the new developments, supporting the pandemic recovery of the area.

The proposed homes will be connected by a series of courtyards and green roofs, and will include a large, green public square and a cycle hub.

Additionally, the building was originally designed to allow pedestrian access from the Moor to London Road through a tunnel underneath the building, but the route was never completed. However, the Draft Local Plan makes provisions for the pedestrian passage to finally be opened, which will reconnect London Road to the city centre and stimulate businesses in the area.

The plans represent the next step in a long and controversial history for the building. It was originally built to house central government’s Manpower Services Commission, with a futuristic brutalist design. The building was constructed over the 70s and opened in 1981, and in the following years housed other government departments including the DWP and the Home Office, until being acquired in the late 2000s by the Council.