How does your neighbourhood grow?

Sheffield City Council is currently talking to people about the part of the Sheffield Development Framework that looks at City Policies and Sites. This focuses on places in Sharrow in a lot more detail and so will impact on the day to day life. These include:



• Residential (Housing, flats etc) no longer being an acceptable use of the ground floor units along London Road District Centre. This is so that it is retained as shops, restaurants and takeaways, drawing people in to the area and serving the needs of local people.



• Abbeydale Road will be contracted into three smaller neighbourhood centres rather than running the full length of the road. This will offer the potential for residential uses between these sections of shops .



• Shoreham Street and Worstenholme Road would not be designated as neighbourhood centres. This is due to National Planning Policy which states that “small parades of Shops of purely neighbourhood significance are not regarded as centres”.



• The Lower Porter Valley area would have a preferred use of Offices.



• Guernsey Road area and the Queens Road corridor is proposed for a flexible range of
employment uses with housing no longer accepted.



• The John Street area would be subdivided into two mixed use areas with a respective bias towards housing for the John Street Triangle Conservation Area and Offices for the area along Bramall Lane. This would mean that general industry and warehouses would no longer be accepted. This would have an impact on sites such as Stag andPortland Works .



• Protection is given to historic cemeteries as well as parks and gardens, this means the General Cemetery and St Mary’s Church.



• Gateways to the city centre will be improved. The policies at the moment specify that this will be to create striking tall buildings at the ring road .



It is currently possible to comment on these proposals and to view them on the proposals map. This can be accessed at www.sheffield.gov.uk/sdfconsult .



For more info see: Sharrow Today issue August 2010 page 8.

Action Group Events in January and February

Saturday 9th January 10am-1pm: Empty Shops and Artists Funding Workshop meet at the OJS

Saturday 16th January 10-1pm: Lloyds Corner Design Workshop at Action Group HQ, the OJS

Wednesday 27th January 5.30pm: South Yorkshire Energy Centre Training, meet at the centre, 5.30pm

Wednesday 24th February: Built Environment and Landscape Students Presentations and Action Group Social. At 6.00pm at the Action Group HQ, the OJS

Please contact me on sharrow_action@hotmail.com for more details about any of the above events. There are also more to come, watch this space!

Reminder: Empty Shops tour with David Parker

The tour of the shops on The Moor with David Parker will be tomorrow, Tuedsay 15th September, meeting outside the Town Hall at 10.30am prompt.

See you all then!

Empty Shops and Rates

Need to understand and explain rates and empty shops? Rates Matrix available for download now!

http://www.meanwhile.org.uk/9.html

The good news is that there can be up to 100% discount on rates for shops used for 'meanwhile' community uses... This is however, discretionary and so we would have to discuss it with the council...

Meanwhile space offer financial support for projects and this is the form we would need to fill in: http://www.meanwhile.org.uk/resources/Project+overview+template.doc

Does anyone want to give this a go?

Meanwhile Space

http://meanwhilespace.ning.com/

Updated info on empty shop fronts.... This is really exciting- lots of great projects such as cinema in shops, art, etc...

and they fund projects too! please check this out...

Our contact at Meanwhile Space is the lovely Emily Miller- and we have now joined as the Distinctive Sharrow Action Group- contact julia@sharrowcf.org.uk for the password/ username if you want to log on as the action group and do some investigating...

Empty Shops: Letters to landlords

I have now sent out the above letter to landlords for vacant retail units on London Road and Abbeydale Road. We will contact them early next week to try to confirm the scale of the proposed festival. It is hoped that once the number of units is ascertained we can really get going!

flags-good news

The flags are going up today!

minutes: Empty shops and artists

Minutes: ‘Empty Shops and Artists’, 16th June 2009, 6.30pm
Present: Luisa Golob, Charlotte Morgan, Rosalie Wyatt, Catherine Crompton
Apologies: Julia Udall, Mel Pearson

The minutes of this meeting have now been removed. Please contact the action group at sharrow_action@hotmail.com if you would like a copy of these minutes

Next Meeting

Sharrow Action Group on

Tuesday 16th june at 6.30pm.

please come along!

to the 'old sharrow junior school'

(empty shop fronts and artists)

Draft Agenda

1. What do we want to achieve?

2. Next steps: Liaising with landlords and agents

3. Available resources

4. Definition of roles

5. Any other business

6. Next meeting

Please email any additions or queries to Luisa Golob http://www.blogger.com/ or Charlotte Morgan charlotte.anne.morgan@googlemail.com;

Vacant Shops and Artists: Advice from Meanwhile Space

I am from Meanwhile Space, a Community Interest Company working with the Development Trusts Association on (the Government's) Meanwhile project to boost community uses of empty properties in our town centres. We're currently at an early stage where we’re gathering intelligence about what’s already happening and exploring/developing/testing the approach in some particular places.

It is a sticky process and can be really quite cumbersome with business rates, and getting the landlords, agents and council onside, which is why we are trying to gather as much intelligence of what people are actually doing to try and make it easier.

You mention the possibility of council tax exemption if you occupy the spaces. It's quite a complicated and cloudy situation - if you are a registered charity, you automatically get 80% relief from business rates and the remaining 20% is up to the council to grant you exemption. If you are a not-for-profit organisation, it is up to the council to decide if they wish to grant you exemption for any of the business rates so it's obviously important to have the council backing you to get relief from rates if you aren't a charity. Properties over £15,00 Rateable Value (you can check your property here if you know the address: http://www.voa.gov.uk ) are liable to pay business rates after 3 months of being empty (a new law since 2008) so landlords paying business rates would have a further incentive if you could relieve this financial pressure for them.

We are hoping to get a meanwhile website up and running as soon as possible to enable people to talk about problems and issues as well as positive avenues so we will let you know when that goes live and hopefully it will help to talk with others who have done it already/ are experiencing it now about any problems you have along the way. Meanwhile, please do keep us updated with your progress, and do get in touch with any queries you may have.

Invitations to Join In: Final Events

http://invitationstojoinin.blogspot.com/

Empty Shop Fronts: minutes May 2009

The minutes of this meeting have now been removed. Please contact the action group at sharrow_action@hotmail.com if you would like a copy of these minutes

Empty Shops Information: Arts Council

The Town Centre’s Initiative was announced by Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government and Andy Burnham, Secretary of State for Culture, on 14 April. It is a government initiative to help reinvigorate ailing town centre’s by enabling vacant retail space to be put to alternative uses.

Hundreds of arts organisations across the country are already doing a lot of this, for example the Turner Contemporary in Margate, Shops Upfront in Liverpool and Bedford Creative Arts, and we hope this new fund will enable many more such schemes to happen. It’s good for the artists and it’s good for the towns.

The Arts Council has set aside £500,000 of our lottery income as a fund to which artists will be able to apply for grants of £1,000 to £10,000 to help them carry out artistic activities in empty shops made available to them through the scheme.

To qualify for an Arts Council town centre’s grant, the activity must be art based. The precise criteria are still being finalised but it is likely they will be very similar to those for Grants for the arts. It’s important that the Arts Council can ensure that the art funded is of the highest standard. Any artist or arts organisation can apply. It is more likely to be individual artists due to the smaller size of the grants available through the scheme.We are now talking to the various government departments involved to determine the best way for the scheme to be administered, and so that we ensure the quality of the art that is funded.

We will post more information on our web site as soon as details are available. Go to www.artscouncil.org.uk/actiononrecession to check for updates on the application process.I Hope you will find this information helpful

Vacant Shops: governement support

1. Standard 'interim-use' leases - landlords need to be assured that there is a proper legal basis for any temporary uses and that they will be able to take the empty premises back as soon commercially viable. To help minimise the cost of setting up such arrangements, Government will create specimen legal documents that landlords can use for temporary occupiers.

2. Temporary leasing of shops to councils - Not all landlords will want to lease to temporary occupiers. In these cases local Councils can step in as an intermediary and agree new temporary, or "meanwhile", leases that enables the Council use the property by granting an interim licence to a local group for community uses.

There has also been some funding secured for this initaive- around £500,000 from the arts council

http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1201277

Next meeting: Lloyds Corner Sub Group and Vacant Shops Sub Group

The next meeting for the Lloyds Corner sub group is Tuesday 21st April at 12.30pm

The next meeting for the art and vacant shop units sub group is Wednesday 6th May at 6.30pm

Wednesday 6th May 2009, the Old Junior School, 6:30pm

1. Attendance and Apologies

2. Project planning

-What do we want to achieve?
-How do we get artists on board? Who would like to take this forward?
-How do we get the landlords and their agents on board? Who would like to take this forward?
-How do we maintain and promote the process?
-Who will administer it?

3. Sharrow Signposts

4. Sharrow Fringe Festival

5. Next Meeting

Action Group Minutes: 31st March 2009, the Old Junior School, 6pm

Present: Jean Cromar, Rosalie Wyatt, Laurence Pattacini, Julia Udall. Lu Golob, Ryan Morley
Apologies: Mel Pearson, Catherine Crompton, Paula Ridsdale, Charlotte Morgan

The minutes of this meeting have now been removed. Please contact the action group at sharrow_action@hotmail.com if you would like a copy of these minutes

Empty Shop Fronts?

Would it be possible to use the empty shop fronts on London Road to display local artists work?

This could benefit the landlords by improving the appearance of the shops, yet not use floor space so that it is still in an appropriate state to rent out... This is not a new idea... http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/feb/18/slack-space-vacant-shops http://blog.ivanpope.com/awol/2009/02/art-into-recess.html

...could we liaise between the landlords/ their agents and local artists... this could even be through a lonely hearts/ lonely windows style website where windows are matched with artists...?