New cafes open in two Rotherham parks – but ward councillor disappointed about ‘scaled down’ plans

The cabinet has accepted the details for the regeneration projects for Thrybergh Country Park and Rother Valley Country Park in Rotherham.

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.

In 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 cafe garden area and improved parking car parking, among other new facilities.

However, as the paper states, both original plans had to be changed “due to cost constraints, inflation and market challenges”.

This saw Thrybergh lose the car park improvements and Rother Valley the “village centre” with the educational space and the restoration of the 18th century mill.

At the meeting on Monday (Aug 7), speaking as a member of the public, Cllr Michael Bennett-Sylvester (Independent, Dalton & Thrybergh) said he was disappointed.

He said: “It’s obviously disappointing to see the plans are being scaled back and scaled-down, and also we’re not going to have a cafe in place until potentially August next year.

“We’re being told it’s due to inflationary pressures.

“When we went through the consultation last year, those inflationary pressures are already becoming visible for people – so I’m just wondering how much it is down to that and what’s being done to help speed the pace of bringing this forward.”

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

In response, Cllr Chris Read, the leader of the council, said there was no “slow time” in the development of the scheme.

He said: “The council is delivering a capital programme on a scale that we’ve not seen in Rotherham before.”

However, he said, after Covid, with inflation running high, “those economic headwinds are against us”.

He added the plan was to deliver the scheme “as high quality as we could” but within the resources available.