Affordable house building in Sheffield grinds to a halt
Plus, are you ready to get your shopping delivered by robot?
Good afternoon readers — and welcome to our Monday briefing.
An interesting fact caught our eye over the weekend, when a reporter posted a list of the number of affordable homes that had been started in English cities last year. What is Sheffield’s total, you might ask. Zero, none, nada. Why is that and what impact is it having on our city? That’s our big story today.
As well as that, we have some more information about the £3 million monastery that was last Monday’s home of the week, a guided tour of the Sheffield Botanical Gardens for National Tree Week, and a beautiful apartment quite near Kelham Island.
🦋Are you on Bluesky? The Tribune has recently jumped on the bandwagon along with thousands of others. Please join us over there if you want to.
Catch up
On Saturday our regular contributor David Bocking returned with a searing piece about the dire situation faced by Sheffield parks as council funding is withdrawn and more of the burden falls on unpaid volunteers. David’s pieces always go down well and this one was no different. “Such an excellent and interesting read,” wrote member Jill Lancaster. You can still read that piece here.
Last week the newsletters we sent to our paying subscribers couldn’t have been more different. In the first, Dan spoke to Rosa Rodrigues, a Brazilian who 24 years ago made Sheffield her home and now runs a coffee stall in a converted horse box on Pound’s Park. And in the second, Victoria dug into the latest goings on at the University of Sheffield where management say that they need to save £5 million to make up for a big fall in student numbers. An extract from that second piece is below:
“While no one is denying that the drop in international students caused a serious financial hit for the university, there are some staff who insist this can’t be the only reason they’ve ended up in the current bind. After all, the most recent annual accounts available show the university made a £44m surplus that year and had £235m in cash squirrelled away.
How, some staff are asking, could this incredibly healthy position have been wiped out in just two years?”
Editor’s note: The piece got a big reaction, with former leader of the Green Party, Natalie Bennett, taking to Bluesky. “State of marketised universities? Parlous”, she commented. We had an incredible 20 new members join to read it. To each one of you — thank you.
That means we’re almost at 50 new members for the month. Which is great — but we’re still a bit adrift of where we’d like to be. We’re working our socks off to get to 3,000 members, which would give us enough confidence to take on another journalist. We’re currently up to 2,427 and it would be a huge morale boost for us if we can hit 2,500 by the end of the year. If you can help, please join today.
The big picture: Deep and crisp and even ❄️
The snow has all gone now but there are still lots of gorgeous photos of Sheffield under a blanket of white on social media. This one by the University of Sheffield’s Professor Nigel Dunnett (who we spoke to for our recent piece about the Meadowhall prairie) shows a beautiful snowy scene; St Nicholas’ Church in High Bradfield surrounded by brilliant white fields, golden autumnal trees, and even a flock of wild geese. “Looks like a Bruegel,” wrote one person on Instagram.
The big story: Affordable house building in Sheffield grinds to a halt 🏡
Top line: Data released last week reveals just how many new affordable homes were started in Sheffield this year: 0. Sheffield was one of only 15 local authorities in the country not to begin work on any affordable homes.
What’s affordable? “Affordable” includes a bundle of different housing types — including social housing, “affordable rent” (where rent is at least 20% below market rates), housing that is sold at 20% below market prices and shared ownership schemes.
It’s not a competition, but… Sheffield is lagging a long way behind the other so-called “core cities” in England on this metric. While this is the first time we’ve hit zero, in most of the years since 2015, Sheffield has come last in this group.
House prices and rents are somewhat lower in Sheffield compared to some cities on that list — lowering the thresholds for classing homes as affordable. But there is strong evidence that Sheffield has a housing crisis — not building anything is not good enough.
Housing and homelessness: A lack of affordable housing is likely to increase the problem of homelessness in the city. As we wrote earlier this month, in 23/24, the council has spent £13.1 million more than it intended to on housing people in temporary and exempt accommodation. But those are the lucky ones. Some people slip through the net entirely and end up on the streets.
In October, the BBC reported that the Sheffield homelessness charity Framework’s street outreach team counted 71 people sleeping rough in and around Sheffield city centre, an increase of 78% on the previous year.
In the last five months, four people living on the streets have tragically died. In July, two men died at the Cathedral and Barker’s Pool. In October, a person died outside the station, and last week a woman died on High Street.
A royal rescue? A surprising source of help has arrived in the form of Prince William. Last year, it was revealed that our city is one of six pilot locations for his new project Homewards — a five-year fight against homelessness. The broad idea is to free up houses in the city for those who would otherwise be homeless.
How’s it going? It’s very hard to tell. A council report from September stated that Homewards planned to publish its “local action plan” for Sheffield in October. It has yet to emerge. What little we do know is that the Sheffield plan will involve an “Innovative Housing Project” in the north-east of the city, which “will work with landlords to unlock an initial 33 three and four-bedroom properties for families on the brink of or experiencing homelessness”.
The Tribune contacted four of the five businesses mentioned in the press release, hoping to find out how many of the 33 properties they’d provided and what the package of support entailed. Only one — My Landlord Cares — responded, telling The Tribune: “The Homewards project is very new and we are working together to understand what the practical implementation of this will be on the ground.”
The weekly Whitworth ✏️
Cartoonist James Whitworth with his take on the University of Sheffield’s financial problems.
This week’s weather 🌤️
Our weather forecast comes from dedicated Sheffield weather service Steel City Skies, who say this week will become quieter and more settled with sunny spells, isolated showers and overnight frost and fog. Temperatures at or a little below average.
Monday 🌤 Good spells of sunshine developing, with the odd blustery shower affecting the region from the west. Windy still, easing overnight with 9C the high.
Tuesday 🌤 Chance of a few morning showers, then becoming largely dry and fine with lighter westerly breezes. Cold overnight with frost, highs of 7C by day.
Wednesday ⛅ Again chance of an isolated shower, but some good spells of sunshine, too. Cold with highs of 5C, light northerly breezes and overnight frost.
Thursday 🌤 Mainly dry and fine with lengthy spells of sunshine. Frost likely early and late with light and variable winds. Highs of 5C.
Friday 🌥 Milder and breezier from the south as the high pressure slips away east. Mainly dry, though cloud increases later. Highs of 8C.
Outlook: Mild and breezy from the southwest for next weekend with less in the way of sunshine as unsettled conditions dominate
To see the full forecast and keep up to date with any changes to the outlook, follow Steel City Skies on Facebook.
Our media picks 🔗
Council explores bringing delivery robots to Sheffield 🤖 Delivery robots could soon be whizzing around the city’s streets after the council began talks with the company Starship to bring their service to Sheffield. The robots currently operate in cities including Milton Keynes and Leeds, and last year completed 7.1 million deliveries worldwide. Sheffield Council deputy leader Councillor Ben Miskell said the zero-emission robots were able to carry substantial loads of groceries and could provide an innovative way to reduce unnecessary car journeys and help people with mobility issues. “I’m excited to explore their use in Sheffield,” he added. Find out more here.
Nuns put up home for sale with £3m pricetag ⛪️ Last Monday it was our home of the week and now the BBC have given the High Bradfield monastery the attention it deserves. The Carmel of the Holy Spirit is known locally as Kirk Edge Monastery, as was given to the order in 1910 by the Duke of Norfolk, whose sister was a member. The nine remaining nuns took the decision to sell rather than continue maintaining the 28-bedroom property, which costs £30,000 a year to heat. "It's quite basic but there is a lot of it,” said Stephen Goff from Sheffield estate agents Hunters.
Rethinking our place in the most important climate negotiations on Earth 🌍 An impressive piece in Now Then about the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, where Sheffield scientists are among thousands of delegates who have been taking part in all-night negotiations to set legally binding targets to keep the earth from catastrophic global heating. Rei Takver speaks to dozens of delegates about how agreements made in summits happening thousands of miles away can be made to feel more real for people back home. "Does COP matter to South Yorkshire? Yes,” says fuel poverty researcher Robert Marchand. “Does South Yorkshire know that it matters? No."
Coming up
This week our paying members will get two extra newsletters packed with original journalism, including Dan going in search of Paul Joseph Watson, an alt-right YouTuber and influential conspiracy theorist who grew up, of all places, in Loxley. If you want to receive both those pieces in full click the link below.
Home of the week 🏡
This beautifully-presented two-bedroom apartment in Philadelphia (the Sheffield neighbourhood, not the American city) isn’t in Kelham Island but, as Victoria wrote last year, that could be just a matter of time. The Bedford Mews warehouse conversion is spitting distance from Shalesmoor tram stop, but is on the market for £165,000, a fraction of what you’d be paying over the road.
Tribune tips: If you want to tell us about a story or give us some information, please get in touch with us by emailing editor@sheffieldtribune.co.uk. We are happy to speak to people off the record, and we guarantee we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity.
Things to do 📆
Festival 🎉 The Sheffield Street Tree Partnership’s annual festival is back, celebrating the beauty and importance of the city’s trees. This year’s festival started on Saturday and continues until 1 December. Whether you're eager to get your hands dirty by planting some trees, unleash your creativity with urban sketching, or try your hand at writing forest-inspired haikus, there's something for everyone. Visit the website to book a free ticket and secure your spot.
Tour 🌳 To mark National Tree Week, on Tuesday, Sheffield Botanical Gardens are hosting a tour of some of their most magnificent, rarest and most unusual trees. The hour-long tour begins at 1pm and will set off from the entrance to the Dorothy Fox Education Centre at the top of the slope from the Thompson Road Gates off Ecclesall Road. There’s no need to book, you can just turn up. People taking the tour are encouraged to make a £3 donation to the gardens.
Jazz 🎷 Jazz at The Lescar returns on Wednesday with the boundary-pushing Leeds-based trio The Exu. Their “concise and attention-grabbing” music has been described as an electrifying fusion incorporating influences from contemporary jazz, free improvised music, hip-hop, heavy metal, electronica, classical music, folk and punk. Blimey. To take a listen before you go, check them out on Bandcamp here. Doors open at 8pm and tickets are priced £10 (students £7).
There will NEVER be any genuinely affordable housing built in UK until right to buy is fully repealed. You cant expect private firms to build houses and sell them cheap. Why would they? The only firm that can do that is a publicly owned one. But no local govt/council will do so as they risk losing them to right to buy! Its the single most destructive policy ever enacted by any govt.
Plenty of research shows building firms land bank then build slowly to keep prices high. Its all bollox about lack of land and planning laws! Think Debeers and diamonds.
And why should tax payers subsidise other peoples house purchase, so they can sell it later for a profit?! The public are too stupid to realise thats what it means...otherwise they never would have allowed it to go on.
And obvs tory lite Starmer wont repeal it. Just tinker pointlessly at the margins.
And as for those ridiculous starship delivery pods...really?! More poor decision making. Theyll just be stolen! Fit into back of a van easy. And so exciting to crack one open!