Rother Valley will stick with Tories in next election insists Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on visit to Rotherham pub

More than half of households in the constituency, which includes Maltby and Dinnington, experience some form of deprivation, according to the Office for National Statistics.

In fact, Dinnington central and Dinnington East are within the most deprived 10 per cent of communities in England.

Since its creation in 1918, Rother Valley had always elected a Labour MP, but all that changed when the so-called red wall crumbled in 2019, and Alexander Stafford became the first Conservative MP for the constituency.

On a visit to the Queen’s Hotel in Maltby today (March 7), Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that he thought voters would stick with a Conservative MP in the constituency at the next general election.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Yes, first and foremost because we’ve got a fantastic local MP. Alex does a fantastic job of championing local communities in Parliament and he’s delivering for them.

“This government is delivering for them, £12m of funding for Dinnington, just over £5m already here in Maltby, and we’re having conversations about what Alex would like to do in future that’s going to help regenerate and improve the town centres and local communities, provide opportunities.

“That is this government levelling up, delivering for people in these communities.

“I know things have been tough over the past couple of years, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and the impact that’s had, but I really believe that we’ve turned a corner at the start of this year.

“The plans that we’ve put in place are starting to deliver change that people want to see.

“If we stick to our plan, people can have peace of mind there’s a brighter future ahead for them and their families, and we can all have a renewed sense of pride in our country.”

The Prime Minister insisted that the people of Rother Valley “are getting the investment and the support that they need.”

Rotherham Council’s bid for Levelling up funding for Dinnington and Wath was not successful in the first round of applications, but the council was later awarded £12m to demolish burnt-out buildings in Dinnington and replace the library in Wath.

A further £5.9m was awarded to transform the former Maltby Grammar School building into a new community learning hub.

“We’re investing in rolling out our anti-social behaviour plan to Alex’s area, where we’ll get more hotspot policing,” he said.

Mr Sunak added that following the government’s decision to scrap HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester, ‘every penny of that money’ would be ‘reinvested in local transport across the north’, on ‘the forms of transportation that people actually use’.

MP Alexander Stafford added: “What I hear on the doorstep again and again, especially in Maltby, residents want change, and they want change away from a poorly-led, poorly run Labour council that’s dominating the area, and that is focuses too much on the people of Rotherham and not Rother Valley.

“This used to be a Labour heartland through and through, but the Conservatives are starting to deliver, no other Prime Minister has been to Rother Valley.

“At the moment there is no direct bus between Maltby, and Dinnington which is only a couple of miles away.

“From the 7th April, we’ve managed to secure a direct bus route so people in Maltby can get to those jobs.

“When it comes to jobs it’s about working with the community, making sure our mayor uses his funds to deliver the bus services we need.”

However, councillor Chris Read, Labour leader of Rotherham Council, said that 14 years of the Conservative government ‘has made life harder’.

He added: “People are worse off. NHS services, GP and dental appointments are more difficult to get than ever.

“In the last three years alone, the number of Rotherham children relying on free school meals has risen by 25 per cent to nearly 13,000 while taxes are at their highest level in living memory.

“By some measures, half of the bus routes in England have been lost since the Conservatives came to power.

“For Rotherham Council, they’ve meant we’ve lost £200 million of services each year, and for most of the last 14 years, we’ve had fewer police officers than there were at the end of the last Labour government.

“One or two local capital investments, however welcome they are, simply can’t make up for that.

“In almost every area of life now it feels as though our country is broken.

“Mr Stafford forced Liz Truss on the country and however much he now appears alongside Mr Sunak, we are all paying the price for their decisions. It’s no wonder so many people now are saying that change can’t come soon enough.”