Container Park 'failure' could have cost Sheffield £36m in Levelling Up Funds councillor claims

Lib Dem leader Shaffaq Mohammed said ministers, who today handed out £2.1bn nationally, may have questioned the city’s ability to make a success of projects. The £540,000 shipping container development of shops, eateries and a bar was delayed for months, ran over budget and never fully opened. It is set to be broken up and could be used as park loos and catering facilities.

Coun Mohammed said Sheffield had to get “much sharper and better” at delivering on big schemes.

He added: “This is the kind of blinding failure that ministers will consider in future. They want guarantees that we will deliver. That’s the challenge Sheffield City Council will have.”

The authority had submitted bids totalling £36m from the fund, including £17m for Heeley and £19m for Parkwood Springs where plans for a ‘gravity park’ based on concrete sledge runs appear to have stalled. The bid to government was to ‘complete works and facilitate development’.

In total, the government handed out £2.1bn to 100 projects. But Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said funding for the North was “a long way off what was promised.”

He added: “The North is getting roughly a third of the total amount for England, marginally below our first phase proportion. This is a long way off the radical economic transformation we were promised and will not make a material difference to closing the north-south divide in productivity. The bidding process has been a time and money-wasting exercise.”