Campaign update

There are now over 120 written objections lodged with the Council. This is a fantastic response and we're heartened by the sheer number of people who've cared enough to put an objection together and submit it. On behalf of the campaign - thank you all of you, too many to name, it is all worthwhile and it has been a brilliant message of support to the campaign and above all the tenants.

Despite these objections however, it still; seems perfectly possible that consent to convert to flats could still be recommended, as there are only a few grounds for refusal UNDER PLANNING LAW, and the developers will undoubtedly have assurances to make and proposals to overcome these. And if consent is given, sooner or later the flats will be built.

The final decision will probably be made at the next Planning Board of City Councillors, during the next few weeks. Remember there are elections coming up in May! The next big effort concerns your local Councillors.

So please go to your local library (or sheffield.gov.uk) and check who the Councillors are for your area, write to them, email them, or even better go and see them at their regular surgeries, and make sure they know about Portland Works. We can still stop this!

Sheffield Telegraph Article

There was an article in the Sheffield Telegraph on the Portland Wroks campaign last thursday january 25th. You can viiew it here: http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/Modern-Little-Mesters-bid-to.6021977.jp

Invititation from Bank Street Arts to Portland Works

Art Sheffield 2010 is taking place from 6 March to 1 May at selected venues in Sheffield City Centre. In response to the Festival, the gallery spaces at Bank Street are being emptied of work and our exhibition programme put on hold in the hope that interested parties will use the spaces to make work in response to the festival, to have their say, to comment, to discuss but most importantly to be active participants.

Bank Street Arts is offering artists, makers, the viewing public and anyone interested the opportunity to respond to this and previous festivals held under the ‘Art Sheffield’ banner for the duration of the festival. If you are interested in being kept up to date and being involved, please join the Facebook group:
'Art Sheffield 2010 - Over to You' at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=267371049645&ref=mf&v=info
This is not a curated alternative fringe – it is something that will grow and evolve only through participation…. or alternatively, it won’t.

As this initiative is a response to Arts provision in general and a comment on its planning, financing, governance and politics (with a large or small p depending on your want) we can think of no more deserving or worthy cause in the city at the moment than the Portland Works issue which seems to encapsulate all of these matters. So if artists, film-makers indeed anyone at or connected with PW is interested in getting involved we would be happy to focus part of our efforts on raising the profile of this campaign in some way - we await your suggestions.

Over to You.
www.bankstreetarts.com

objecting to the planning application

Some poeple have been having a bit of trouble with objecting... try this: emailing the case officer Trevor Sullivan directly, on trevor.sullivan@sheffield.gov.uk or...ideally (so we dont clog up his inbox and totally alienate him)

It should also be easy if you follow this link: http://planning.sheffield.gov.uk/publicaccess/tdc/dcapplication/application_comments_entryform.aspx?caseno=JYUXQGNYFY000 Hope that this helps...

Saturday Guardian, 23rd January 2010 Work Section: Ablett Tools John Street Conservation Area

Portland Works Steering Group Meeting Tonight

There will be a steering group meeting tonight at 5pm at the Old Junior School. Please RSVP if you intend to attend. Thanks

Our Vision for the Works

Broad Aims/ Vision as agreed at the 12 Jan public meeting

Portland Works should have

1. Affordable small scale workshops and business space for creative and manufacturing activities.
2. A broad range of businesses and individuals maintained (metalwork, furniture, art, music, light industry and crafts). People who make things! Continuing the rich existing community. Encouragement for start-up businesses.
3. A public profile: regular open days and/or a dedicated part of the building to demonstrate its heritage. Galvanise festival is a possible model. Also provision for school visits.
4. An education/ training facility established. Possibly aimed at high skill, specialist training rather than ‘start of the ladder’. Links with Sheffield College and Freeman College. Apprenticeships with the different crafts onsite.

What do you think?

old news?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/3582971.stm
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/localnews/Cutlery-works-change-opposed.4987000.jp

Next meeting: Portland Works forward planning meeting

The next meeting to discuss the planning applciation and alternative futures for Portland Works will be Tuesday 12th January at 5pm in the Sharrow Suite, Sharrow Community Forum, The Old Junior School, South View Road, Sheffield. (Please see our website for a map: www.sharrowcf.org.uk)

Please RSVP if you intend to attend, sharrow_action@hotmail.com

Thanks,

planning objections and historic information

Sirs,

At a time when the Regional Development Agency, Yorkshire Forward, and Sheffield Council are justifiably proud of the efforts they have made to establish a high technology metalworking cluster on the Advanced Manufacturing Park at Orgreave, I am dismayed to find that they may be willing to extinguish an existing and equally important centre of excellence in metalworking at Portland Works. Whilst the building, in part, may be preserved by conversion to flats, the jobs and skills within it will not. I am currently undertaking a PhD at Sheffield University, studying the historical role of steel and developing new techniques for processing steel. Nowhere else, not even in the University or on the AMP, can I find the necessary skills required to help me in my work. I can find them at Portland Works. I can take metal ingots there, have them indelibly engraved with reference numbers, have the same ingots worked down to strip and then that strip made into tools and cutting edges. Under the same roof.

I am not the first to use their services: almost a hundred years ago Harry Brearly took his first stainless ingots there to have test cutlery manufactured. Does Sheffield really want to throw away such a heritage for the sake of a few more flats ?

Yours faithfully,

Stephen Cater.

New information on objections

Writing objections -the campaign 'hub' portlandworks.co.uk now has full information on how to make a really cracking objection! This will help make sure you hit one of the 'material considerations' for it to really count.
Finally, if someone wants a job, here's a question. How many flats and 'studio apartments' under £100 000 are on the market sale or rent in Sheffield right now? If someone can trawl rightmove and email an approximate answer to me, I'd be delighted! Planning could use the information... derekmor@googlemail.com

To object online, please follow this link:

http://planning.sheffield.gov.uk/publicaccess/tdc/DcApplication/application_detailview.aspx?caseno=JYUXQGNYFY000

Post from Robin Wood re: City Culture Strategy

> On monday I attended an open consultation on Sheffields Culture
> strategy and the bid for UK city of culture 2013.
>
> The event started with 30 minutes of open microphone when everyone
> present stood up and said what they wanted included in the new strategy.
> can you believe 25 minutes talk about Sheffield's culture without
> mentioning steel or cutlery?
>
> I said my piece and will follow up in writing to try to ensure these
> are included in the draft strategy. 2013 is the centenary of Harry
> Brearly's discovery of stainless, was it the same year he had it made
> into cutlery at Portland? We should publicise that.
>
> Robin

New Portland Works Website

There is a new website for information on Portland Works here: http://www.portlandworks.co.uk/

This blog will still run in parallel to it...

Galvanised Festival- Portland Works...

Hello,

If anyone wants to visit Portland Works the Galvanised Festival is next Wednesday afternoon... You need to book in: 0114 2734427

Letter in Sheffield Telegraph

I wrote this letter to the Sheffield Telegraph last week when I first heard about Portland Works. Since then I've found out a lot more and I'd like to help with the Campaign. The letter is printed in the 26 November issue - here's the text for those of you unlucky enough to live out Sheffield!

Dear Editor

I was privileged last week to visit Portland Works on Randall Street, as part Sheffield's splendid 'Galvanised' Festival. Few of us in Sheffield perhaps realise what an extraordinary place this is, one of a few surviving complexes of workshops near the city centre which is still. unbelievably, occupied by traditional craftsmen and manufacturers of tools, still in business doing things the way that made Sheffield famous. To see steel being forged, ground and polished into fine and useful tools, and to see the work of a master knife maker, made me proud to live in Sheffield. To see a gentleman, Ray I believe he's called, forging steel as he has done for his working life of sixty years is humbling.

Despite the building's appearance - it seems at first sight to be in advanced decay - it is almost fully occupied by working craftspeople, as well as representatives of a more recent industry, rock bands, who use the space for rehearsals. Having now experienced the sounds of a spring forge at full throttle, I'd say they were well matched.

This is living heritage, not a museum or polished up piece of preserved past. Such a place ought to be treasured by the City, the skills of its occupants valued and perhaps passed on to a new generation through training schemes, and the entire works earmarked for much needed maintenance, possibly even with public funding, to ensure the continuation of these fine and useful commercial activities. I was stunned to hear that plans are well advanced to clear out the existing occupants and convert the building - grade 2* listed - into FLATS. Obviously the existing businesses would be incompatible with residential use. Equally obvious is that some of these businesses may not survive the move. Readers may recall seeing something about this last February.

We have lost so many of these places, many due to disuse and the collapse of manufacturing in Sheffield. Most have been demolished, some have survived to become offices and, yes, flats. And they make very nice flats too I'm sure. But here we are in 2009 and here's a bit of the 19th century still doing what it was built for. This is not sentimentality, this is ensuring the survival of essential skills in manufacturing and providing futures for younger people in our traditional industries and crafts.

I now find the planning application is in again, with a deadline of 10 December, City reference 08/01850/FUL. Is anyone out there doing anything about this? If so can I join you? And if not can we start doing something very soon?

Article on Portland Works

http://projectsheffield.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/new-planning-application-for-portland-works/

New Planning Application for Portland Works!

A new planning application for Portland Works (reference 08/01850/FUL) was validated yesterday by the Council's Planning department and the consultation period runs from now until 10th December.

The application can be found on the Council's website here:

http://planning.sheffield.gov.uk/publicaccess/tdc/DcApplication/application_detailview.aspx?caseno=JYUXQGNYFY000

Please pass this information on to anyone else who is involved,

Thanks,

Neil Piper

petition led by sheffield city council...

We are calling on the Government to step up support for South Yorkshire manufacturing in a bid to save what is ultimately the heart of the UK’s industry.

We want to work with South Yorkshire industries and neighbouring authorities to launch a campaign to lobby Government for more support.

We want people to sign our petition in support and show us where they agree with us so we can show Government how much this means to the people of Sheffield.
We are campaigning on the following:

The Government should work and invest with the manufacturing industry to ensure that the industries such as steel making can be ready when the economy improves.

We want more Government-backed training and apprenticeships in the skills that industry needs to keep it ahead of other nations.

We want the Government to do more, including getting help on research and development to prevent manufacturing jobs from going abroad.

We need a simplified research and development tax system that provides genuine incentives for manufacturing companies looking to grow and become more competitive.
If you agree with these points please sign our petition on the No 10 website.

Galvanised Festival- Portland Works...

Please come down to the Galvanised Festval at Portland Works, which is running for the following three Wednesdays, the 18th, 25th Novemeber and the 2nd December between 12-2pm...

For more details please contact Andrew Cole at Wigful Tools on 0114 2725681 or email info@wigfulltools.co.uk

Empty Shops