Rotherham Council to invest £1.5m in delayed Effingham Street revamp as regeneration plans progress

The proposals include replacing worn paving with high-quality stone, upgrading street lighting and CCTV, creating better layouts for market stalls, enhancing public seating, and installing new infrastructure to support events and street trading.

placeholder image — The proposals include replacing worn paving with high-quality stone, upgrading street lighting and CCTV, creating better layouts for market stalls, enhancing public seating, and installing new infrastructure to support events and street trading.

A delayed project to transform Effingham Street in Rotherham town centre is set to get back on track, with a £1.5m boost set to turn the well-used pedestrian route into a safer, more welcoming and accessible area for shoppers and market traders.

The proposals include replacing worn paving with high-quality stone, upgrading street lighting and CCTV, creating better layouts for market stalls, enhancing public seating, and installing new infrastructure to support events and street trading.

Cabinet members will be asked on July 7 to approve the additional funding to enable the delayed project to proceed, following a pause due to rising construction costs.

Effingham Street was one of the original sites earmarked for public realm improvements in the 2017 Town Centre Masterplan.

While works on College Street, Bridgegate and Frederick Street and Howard Street have been completed, the Effingham Street element of the programme was postponed after budgets were stretched by cost increases.

RMBC now plans to reallocate funding from the Town Centre Investment Fund to move the Effingham Street scheme forward. Designs for the improvements, developed by the council’s landscape design team, cover both the upper and lower parts of the street, from Hastings Clock to the old Boots building, and from Market Square to the Camellia sculpture.

Effingham Street is currently hosting traders from the outdoor covered market while redevelopment work is underway. Once those works are completed, the traders are expected to be relocated back into the refurbished space, with any remaining needs for on-street market trading likely to be met on Frederick Street.

Work on the Effingham Street improvements is expected to begin in February 2026, timed to follow completion of the outdoor covered market redevelopment. The public realm works will be delivered in phases to keep pedestrian access open and minimise the impact on local shops. Once complete, ongoing maintenance will be covered by existing town centre revenue budgets.

A cost breakdown of the Effingham Street scheme is included in a confidential appendix to the report, due to the commercial sensitivity of tendering processes.