Plans approved for £8m Rotherham country parks upgrade

Plans for Rother Valley Country Park include a new lakeside café and improvements to the car park

Plans for a £8m refurbishment of two parks in Rotherham have been given the go ahead.

Rother Valley Country Park and Thrybergh Country Park will get new cafés with upgrades to outdoor areas.

However, the original plans have been scaled back "due to cost constraints, inflation and market challenges" a council report said.

One councillor, whose ward covers Thrybergh Country Park, expressed "disappointment" with the changes.

The £5.5m Rother Valley Country Park plans include a new waterfront building, featuring a large café for up to 150 people, a new play space for the café garden area and improved car parking.

Thrybergh Country Park will get a new cafe with indoor seating for 60-80 people, as well as seating and picnic space for up to 100 people between the café and the water's edge as part of a £2.5m upgrade.

However proposed car park improvements will not go ahead at the site and plans to build an educational space and restore an 18th Century mill at Rother Valley have also been dropped, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Independent member Michael Bennett-Sylvester told a council meeting: "It's obviously disappointing to see the plans are being scaled back and scaled-down, and also we're not going to have a café in place until potentially August next year."

He added from the outside it looked like "we are behind schedule again".

A new café at Thrybergh Country Park will have indoor seating for up to 80 people and a picnic area by the lake

In response, the Labour leader of the council Chris Read, said there was no "slow time" in the development of the scheme.

"The council is delivering a capital programme on a scale that we've not seen in Rotherham before, he said.

However, he said, after Covid, with inflation running high, "those economic headwinds are against us" adding that the plan was to deliver the scheme "as high quality as we could" but within the resources available.

Both projects are expected to be financed by money from the government's Levelling Up Fund with additional cash from a council contingency fund.