A year ago today, on Monday 13 October 2025, members of our community gathered at the Showroom on Paternoster Row in Sheffield city centre to make the case for Handsworth Hall Farm and Bramley Common.
For more than seven hours, residents and our representatives explained to a Government Inspector what these places mean to S13.
These are familiar places: the fields we walk across, the hedgerows where we see wildlife, the trees that change with the seasons. Having countryside on our doorstep is part of what makes S13 a place we want to live.
Thank you to everyone who attended, helped prepare the case or supported those speaking. Our local councillors, Alison Norris and Mick Rooney, were there throughout the day.
A year on, both places are still in the draft Plan, and many of the questions raised that day still need answers.
The Showroom, Paternoster Row, Sheffield city centre
Remembering the day
The morning focused on Handsworth Hall Farm (SES29). When residents raised the flooding they regularly see on Highfield Spring, the Council said it was Rotherham’s problem. There were gasps in the room.
In the afternoon, the Inspector, Katie Child, turned to Bramley Common (SES30). She had visited it the day before and met quite a few people out enjoying the sunshine. She described it as “a series of quite attractive fields” and noted the footpaths crossing it and how well used the site was.
It was a familiar picture to us, and the Inspector had seen it for herself. “The community clearly sees it as an important asset”, she said.
She also noted “a significant number of objections”, and had picked out the main concerns residents raised for the day’s agenda. It meant a lot to hear the place we care about described that way, and to know those objections had been read.
Our barrister, Rowan Clapp, ended the day by listing what he described as common ground with the Council: parts of Bramley Common in flood zones 2 and 3, a watercourse, former mining, roads approaching capacity and farmland whose quality had not been fully assessed. Invited to respond, the Council declined.
Thomas Mottram ploughing at Handsworth Hall Farm, 1926. Picture Sheffield.
That photograph was taken a hundred years ago. Farming is part of Handsworth’s history and still shapes the landscape around us. Decisions being made now will determine how much of that countryside survives for the next generation.
Then and now
Access. A year ago, Savills, for the landowner, had an unpublished transport assessment for SES29 and agreed “in principle” to share it. In July, the Inspectors asked for new access evidence to be published (EXAM 217C). That evidence concerns a proposed roundabout off Orgreave Lane and is now out for consultation (EXAM 221).
Wildlife. Our report asked how land could be allocated when “key evidence and assessments are still missing”. Full ecological evidence for SES29 was expected by Easter 2026. The only ecology evidence we have seen still dates from December 2023, and in September Handsworth Beck was dug out, destroying an ecological corridor on the site.
Farmland. Updated mapping now predicts better farmland at both places than the Council first assessed. The Council still concludes the allocations “remain appropriate” (EXAM 219), even though the same mapping now predicts lower-quality farmland on other sites it turned down.
The basics. Residents pointed out wrong site boundaries, and our report asked how we could “trust that the finer details have been handled correctly”. In July, the Inspectors asked for an amended SES29 boundary to be published, and the Council confirmed that SES30’s capacity had been “incorrectly recorded”.
The promised timetable has slipped
In April 2025, a Council report recommended releasing Green Belt and anticipated adoption of the Local Plan by July 2026. It said the Council had “already exhausted options in the urban area”, though it last asked landowners what land was available six and a half years ago, and has not updated it's brownfield register for three years. It warned that further delay would harm the city’s economy.
July 2026 passed. Adoption is now expected “early next year”, and Council Leader Fran Belbin has described Sheffield as entering “a fifth consultation, which had not been anticipated”. Hurriedly choosing inappropriate Green Belt sites has not avoided delay; it has increased it.
For residents, it has meant another year of uncertainty.
In August, Councillor Belbin and Green Group Leader Angela Argenzio came to S13 to see the land for themselves.
In September, we told Councillor Belbin that the Council can ask the Inspectors for a rethink. She agreed to seek advice on it and has since written to the Government. She also said she was considering “whether there was a political route through the current situation”.
We think Councillors Belbin and Argenzio can now see the problems residents raised a year ago. Their parties now run the Council that put Handsworth Hall Farm and Bramley Common in the Plan. It is up to them to put that right.
We know it can feel tiring to be asked again. But your knowledge of the fields, roads and local history can help the Inspectors assess the new proposals.
Our guide to responding covers wildlife, traffic, farmland and the Quaker burial ground, with a suggested comment for each.
Choose a topic you know. Three or four sentences on what you have seen, where and when, are enough.
Email each topic separately to [email protected], with the guide’s reference and your full name. If you have already responded, thank you. Please share this email with neighbours who can comment too.
Another way to help
If you’re unable to submit a comment this time, you can support the campaign by making a donation. Donations help cover the professional fees involved in examining the evidence and putting our community’s case forward.
If you’re able to contribute, any amount is appreciated. Thank you for helping us keep going.
The reason we gathered at the Showroom last October is still with us every time we walk across these fields. They matter to this community, and we will keep speaking up for them.
