Harvest family activities on Sunday 24 September in Rivelin
Volunteers needed!
Would you consider supporting improvements to our local Scout hut?
You may have noticed the building work at the Scout Hut on Benty Lane. This is the headquarters of the 36th Sheffield St John’s Ranmoor Scout Group.
The group is looking to upgrade and modernise the building in a series of phases to provide:
- wheelchair access
- better toilet facilities
- more space for all the different groups that use it.
This is a community asset that, as well as providing a home for the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts, is also made use of by various local groups including the Old School House Nursery; Art Classes; Computer Classes; Chairobics and Sensory Classes for Babies. It’s hoped that the upgrades to the building will allow even more groups to use it.
The group are trying to raise money to allow this work to be completed and among other things are running sponsored walks, family bingo evenings and running a buy a brick campaign.
They could really use your support – whether you are a former Beaver, Cub or Scout yourself or a parent of one of the past, current and future Scouting members or a friend of the Scouting movement.
Make a donation towards Benty Lane Scout hut
You can also donate by contacting the group treasurer direct using eric@ranmoorscouts.com.
S. Palfreyman – a glimpse into Crosspool’s past
‪A bit of Crosspool history has been uncovered in the precinct! Who remembers S. Palfreyman?‬
Macmillan coffee morning at Enhance in Crosspool
Staff at Enhance the hairdressers in Crosspool are going to be holding a Macmillan coffee morning on Wednesday 27, Thursday 28 and Friday 29 September throughout the day.
They will be selling cakes and buns to take away to raise money for Macmillan cancer support.
Has The Plough pub been purchased as a development opportunity?
An update from The Plough pub campaign team:
As you all know, we lodged our bid with Enterprise on August 17 and had some discussions with them after that date.
We were informed that a ‘significantly’ higher bid had been made and that it was from someone who wished to continue to operate the Plough as a pub. We took this information from Enterprise in good faith.
Since then, it has been very difficult to obtain any further information about the potential buyer but we have picked up a number of disturbing rumours suggesting that the pub has been purchased as a development opportunity.
We understand that a residential development of the site might be attempted in the guise of reopening the Plough as a bistro for a short period time but with the long term aim of redeveloping the whole site at the expense of the pub.
We remain committed to protecting the Plough as an Asset of Community Value and will campaign against any proposed change of use or any backdoor attempt to redevelop the site. The current ACV runs until 2020 at which time we can reapply for listing for another five years.
We did anticipate that when dealing with Enterprise, things are not always as they seem, and it may be we are in for another hard fought planning campaign.
We are keen to get the message out there to any potential developers – beware of the power of our local community!
Peter
The Plough Community Benefit Society
Hallam Tower hotel: demolition begins
The demolition of the former Hallam Tower hotel on Manchester Road has started.
Planning permission for luxury apartments was previously granted.
Last chance to submit your Crosspool photos for the 2018 calendar!
The deadline for sending in your photos for consideration for next year’s Crosspool calendar is the end of Thursday 31 August 2017.
The Plough on Sandygate Road to reopen as a pub
The Save The Plough campaign group have announced that their bid to buy The Plough has been beaten by a higher offer from another party that wishes to reopen the pub:
We submitted our bid to the agents last week. Our bid was based on a professional valuation of £435,000 which also included the third car park adjacent to the sports ground.
We were informed by the agents that the third car park had now been taken out of the sale but we stood by our bid.
In discussions with both the agents and Enterprise Inns this week, we were asked if we could increase our bid to match one which was ‘significantly’ higher than ours. We did not want to get drawn into a bidding war and restated that our bid was a fair and reasonable offer.
It seems that Enterprise Inns will go with the higher offer. We do not know who the other bidder is but Enterprise did say it was someone who wants to reopen the pub and it is someone with a track record in the industry.
Despite the fact that we now seem to have reached the end of the road for our project, we would like to thank everyone who has supported the campaign and those who pledged to invest in a community pub. Local people have shown great support for the Plough and we think that this has persuaded other investors that it can be a viable pub and a great local.
Obviously, there is some disappointment in that we might not meet our aim of reopening the Plough as a community run pub but we feel that we can all be proud of what we achieved. When our campaign began in June 2016, our original campaign slogan was ‘Save the Plough’ and it looks like we have done that. If we had not successfully campaigned against Sainsbury’s application for change of the use, the pub would have been lost forever.
During the course of our campaign, it has become clear that there is tremendous community spirit in Crosspool and it would be great if that community spirit could be channeled into other local projects – any ideas?
Once again, we would like to thank everyone for their support throughout a long and challenging campaign and, whenever we had a low point as a campaign group, the support of the community always got us through.
Regards
Peter
(The Plough Community Campaign)
