Work starts on £500,000 revamp of Sheffield leisure centre and park
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The town has received an extra £500,000 as part of the Towns Fund programme for regeneration and economic development.It will be used to create an outdoor seating and play area which will link the new Stocksbridge Leisure Centre cafe to Oxley Park.There will also be improvements to access routes and landscaping and an upgrade to car and cycle parking at the centre. Work is expected to take three months to complete.Volunteers from the Friends of Oxley Park helped with the leisure centre project and tree planting in the new playground will be carried out by local charity Steel Valley Project.Graham Silverwood, from the Community Leisure Centre Trust and chairman of the Town’s Fund Health and Leisure Sub Committee, said: “We are delighted to see work started on this project at the leisure centre so soon.“We would like to thank everyone who has helped to get these fantastic improvements from the concept stage to the contactors starting on site this month in such a short amount of time. This project is going to make a huge difference to the whole community.”It comes as a more ambitious bid for up to £25 million to transform the area has been submitted to the Government.The bid includes improvements to walking and cycle trails, a major redevelopment of part of Manchester Road including a new library and community facilities, improvements to the Manchester Road area as well as better links to other parts of the town, a post-16 hub at Stocksbridge High School and a new community bus network.It was submitted at the end of January and there should be an update on the outcome in late spring.Mark Dransfield, co-chair of the Towns Fund Board and managing director of Dransfield Properties, said: “The board has submitted an extremely strong bid which will make a huge difference to the town and deliver a number of truly transformational projects in Stocksbridge.”
