Councillor calls for Sheffield to get 50-storey building ‘before Leeds does’

Councillor Chris Rosling-Josephs made the comment ahead of voting on plans for a new 19-storey development comprising build-to-rent apartments and retail units at a planning and highways committee meeting this week.

He said: “I think it’s a good place to actually put some tall buildings. I’m going to say this, I wish it was 91-storeys rather than 19.

“I disagree with planners, I don’t think we should have a maximum height on developments in a city centre and I think this is one of them places because it’s next to the river, we can get away with a bit of height within the city.”

He also asked developers to be more creative, joking that the government was now requiring the council to find an extra “five hundred million” houses in the next five years.

“Open space doesn’t necessarily have to mean on the ground,” he said. “It can be in the air like if you look at some of these developments they have in the far east and Singapore and Holland where they don’t necessarily have public space on the ground. It’s on top of the buildings as well or even half way up the buildings, connecting them. So let’s have something imaginative. Let’s see if we can have 50 storeys before Leeds does.”

Leeds currently has the tallest building in Yorkshire, the 32-storey Bridgewater Place.

But this could change with plans to build a 38-storey tower on Rockingham Street in Sheffield city centre, the outline for which was approved by the council last year.