These were the remarks delivered by Cllr Read at the Rotherham Together Partnership Showcase Event on October 1st 2025, held at Skills Street in Gulliver’s Valley.

 

Welcome to what you might think of as the fifth of our Showcase events on the road. We started out at University Centre Rotherham, and then Grimm and Co’s award winning Emporium of Stories. Last year we were in the new cinema on Forge Island – the one they said would never happen.

Six months ago we were in the fabulous new business hub at Maltby Academy, in the old school building that had been empty so long it could have been demolished, but instead today is a state of the art facility bringing together the school, businesses and community groups.

And today we’re here in this unique Skills Street development. A place that opens the window to jobs and careers, lifts sights and broadens horizons.

All five of the venues are places we have built together. Visible, physical, transformational realisations of the journey that we have been on.

It was eight years ago that we held the first of these events. Literally just that week we had received confirmation from the government that they would not block planning permission for Gullivers Valley theme park to open. And here we are.

I spoke that day about the funding we’d secured to refurbish the central bus station, to build what became University Centre Rotherham, plans to bring McLaren to the Advanced Manufacturing Park. Our late friend Julie Kenny set out her vision to save Wentworth Woodhouse. The tram train hadn’t yet opened, we’d only just taken ownership of Forge Island, we’d built none of the town centre housing.

Not everything I referenced in my remarks that day came to realisation. You might have noticed that we’ve had a little bit of trouble with the airport next door. But every single one of the Rotherham developments I spoke about that day has now been delivered. We’ve kept our promises.

Over the summer when the Northern Powerhouse Partnership named Rotherham as the fastest growing economy measured by productivity in the North over the last decade, that in turn was testimony to everything we’ve done.

And since we were last together:

• The Clifton Park splash park reopened after a £900,000 refurbishment, the largest free water park in the country. And more than 35,000 visits put it through its paces.
• The Rotherham Show returned in spectacular fashion, welcoming 95,000 visitors. We were once again proud to offer this event, which is still the biggest free festival in the North of England.
• The Children’s Capital of Culture programme that we’ll hear more about this morning brought joy and opportunity to young people through events like the UPLIFT festival and the House of Fun at Wentworth Woodhouse.
• Works began on the investment in Thrybergh Country Park, and are on site for the new facilities at Rother Valley.
• The next stage of £4m of public realm improvements in the town centre are now underway.
• We unveiled our 730^th new council home, expanding access to safe, warm and affordable homes.
• Our Pathways to Work scheme has launched, alongside the Council’s expanded Employment Solutions team, helping more people back into work and tackling the scourge of long term ill health.
• We’re investing in our local high streets, with major capital works planned in Maltby, Dinnington, Wath and Swinton, and our new Street Safe teams due to come online in those places in the coming weeks – so that people see not only physical regeneration, but safe and welcoming spaces where we tackling anti-social behaviour and help to put people’s minds at rest.
• And we’re providing hundreds of thousands of pounds of grant funding to support our local high street shops and businesses too.
• Alongside our Health colleagues, we’re upgrading nine GP surgeries across the borough, making it easier for people to access the primary care that they need wherever they are.
• And back in July it was brilliant to welcome the RHS Flower Show to Wentworth, for the first time ever in South Yorkshire.

The Julie Kenny who took us all to Downing Street to seek government funding, meaning that I wander obliviously past Naomi Campbell and into the event with Andrew Lloyd-Webber, would have thought that was exactly where the Royal Horticultural Society ought to be. So it’s good that they’ve come round to her way of seeing things.

It’s great to be back today to reflect on the journey we’ve been on, and to the consider the challenges that still lie ahead.

When McLaren opened on the AMP, I was fond of saying that the next generation of Rotherham kids were going to build supercars. And now they are doing.

Through our Children’s Capital of Culture programme we’re opening the doors to careers that would usually be out of reach for too many of our young people.

Across our Partnership, we’re working hard to make it easier for partners to spend more money in our local economy, supporting real local jobs, training and apprenticeships, and I want to thank all our partners for their commitment to that task.

And here at Skills Street, sparking the ideas to inspire the next generation into the world of work. Building supercars, flying planes, solving nuclear fusion. Why not?

Later on this morning we’ll formally launch our campaign to return mainline train services to Rotherham, as part of a £300 million package to transform our rail connectivity, create a thousand jobs and facilitate thousands of new homes. It could be the single biggest thing we can do to lift the future prospects of Rotherham’s economy.

When I was at school, the received wisdom was that you had to leave here if you wanted to really make something of your life.

That never was good enough.

It wasn’t good enough for me and it definitely isn’t good enough for my kid.

We’ve already changed people’s lives.

Hundreds of people are living in better homes right now, today, because of the choices we’ve made.

Thousands of low paid employees earn better than poverty pay, because we stepped up.

We’re spending tens of millions of pounds more with Rotherham businesses because we chose to do it.

People’s lives are transformed by the opportunity of Higher Education, and they’re safer in their homes and on the streets because of the transformation of services in policing and social care.

But there’s so much more to do, because while we’ve been doing all that the world hasn’t stood still.

 

Over the summer, national flags started popping up on lamp posts across our borough and around the country.

When I asked for views about how the council should respond, someone accused me of sounding like I understood the concerns of the people flying them. It wasn’t meant to be a compliment. And you know what? To some extent I’m probably guilty of that.

Not that we should ever surrender to the politics of grievance, or division or racism.

If the flag is the symbol of who we are as a people then we must never, ever, give it up to those who want to spread that poison.

 

But in those remarks eight years ago, I said that we could never be made whole as a community if some people were too scared to leave their homes, or their neighbourhoods, or to go into the town centre. We cannot afford to be afraid of each other.

 

And actually, for years, when we ask Rotherham residents how they think we get on with people from other communities, year on year they have said it’s getting better.

 

Yet all I hear in so many of the responses I’ve had over the last few weeks is people who are afraid.

Afraid that folks in small boats are coming to take their country away.

Afraid that their identity is under threat.

Afraid that racism and xenophobia will tear us apart.

 

I never dreamt that the world’s richest man would make it his business to try to inspire violence in my home. Frankly none of us are really prepared for the media environment we now live in. As a guy who volunteers with the Royal British Legion said to me last weekend, “You just don’t know what to believe anymore.”

 

When you put all that together, in places that feel ignored, overlooked and left behind, with people who haven’t been given the chance to see hope in any other view of the world and men who’ve been told their whole lives that the only emotion they’re allowed to feel is anger? Yeah, I get it.

It’s the oldest trick in the book, using fear and scarcity to drive wedges between people, to create scapegoats – whoever they may be.

But there is no them. There is only us.

So the work we’re doing to bring our communities together is more important than it’s ever been.

It was the American gay rights campaigner Harvey Milk whose famous catch phrase was “You’ve gotta give ‘em hope”.

And as we navigate these coming months, that’s exactly what we’ve all got to do.

Starting with the promises we’ve kept and the storms we’ve weathered, in which every person in this room has played their part.

Telling the story of how, day by day and year by year, we’re building that place that everyone can once again be proud of.

Building a local economy that gives people certainty and security – that really is inclusive.

Strengthening our public services, so people have a real sense of agency and control over their own lives.

Bringing communities together, so instead of the anonymity of social media, and impersonal stream of data that arrives in all of our pockets, we truly see our neighbours as our friends, whether they arrived here a hundred years ago, or just last week, whether they were born round the corner or on the other side of the world.

And knowing that tomorrow will be better than today, and we will hand to our children better opportunities and a brighter future than we ourselves have known.

The occasion is still piled high with difficulty. But we’re still rising.