Sheffield City Region Documents
Documents are available for download at the foot of the page.
The Economic Case for High Speed Rail to Leeds City Region and Sheffield City Region
South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive and Metro have welcomed new research which highlights the economic benefits Yorkshire would gain by being connected to a high-speed rail network.
Research already carried out by ARUP and Volterra had shown that a ‘Y-shaped’ network travelling from London to Birmingham, where it would split with one arm of the ‘Y’ heading to Yorkshire, could provide between £1.5bn and £3bn of productivity benefits to the economy, in addition to transport benefits of around £29bn.
Their new research estimates that linking the Sheffield City Region the Leeds City Region, and the “Three Cities” of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester as part of a national high speed rail network would connect an area of 6.7 million people and 3 million jobs. Onward connections to the Tees Valley and Tyne and Wear City Regions would provide access to a further 2.2 million people and 0.9 million jobs.
This route to the East of the Pennines would deliver an estimated £60 billion in standard transport benefits and a further £2.3 billion of productivity benefits. Its Benefit to Cost Ratio would be 5.61, compared with 2.58 for the route to Manchester.
In addition, a direct route to the Leeds City Region, via the East Midlands and Sheffield City Region, would have greater economic benefits than the alternative option of a less direct route to Leeds via Manchester. It would have a higher Benefit to Cost Ratio of 2.46 compared to only 1.88 for the less direct route via Manchester, deliver far greater productivity benefits - £2.3 billion compared to £0.4 billion - and result in far faster journey times to Leeds, York and the North East.
The latest research also highlights the need to make improvements to existing rail routes in the short-medium term. Delivery of high speed rail to the north will be a long-term (20-30 year) project, but existing proposals to upgrade and electrify the Midland Main Line, East Coast Main Line, trans-Pennine and Leeds-Sheffield links can deliver substantial benefits, in some cases at modest costs.
Improvements to existing routes, and to local and regional rail routes and services, will improve access to high speed stations, helping exploit the benefits of high speed rail in providing capacity relief on existing lines.
Sheffield City Region: Development Programme Update
The Sheffield City Region Development Programme (CRDP) has been updated to set out the challenges and opportunities the City Region faces and the strategic priorities where there is greatest value from working together. The CRDP focuses on three core issues where action is essential and appropriate at the City Region level: Economy and Skills, Housing, and Transport. The document also considers the role of places and areas, and their interconnections, as well as how the thematic priorities pan out within them. It is intended that this refreshed CRDP will provide an evidence-based analysis to help support the Sheffield City Region LEP proposal.
Sheffield City Region: Shaping the Future of the City Region Economy
Towards the end of 2009, the Sheffield City Region commissioned joint research by both universities in Sheffield to exemplify what the development of new industries will mean on the ground in the city region. The research Shaping the Future of the Sheffield City Region Economy - is a powerful demonstration of the capacity that exists in this part of the country to capitalise on excellence in the public and private sectors to develop new industries and new jobs to go with them.
Sheffield City Region: City Relationships report
The Northern Way and the Department of Communities and Local Government commissioned the City Relationships research programme which was carried out by The Work Foundation, Centre for Cities and SURF between October 2008 and November 2009.
The research aimed to test a hypothesis derived from recent studies that stronger and more complementary economic relationships between towns and cities in the North of England would generate higher levels of sustainable economic growth and development. The project examined the economic relationships of five of the most significant economic centres in the North - Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield - and a selection of cities and towns nearby, looking in particular at labour market linkages and the connections between businesses. It considered barriers to more complementary economic relationships and what public policy might do to foster them. A synthesis report was produced to provide an overview of the Northern city regions and broad results in addition to five separate reports on each of the economic centres.
The study on the Sheffield City Region provides an interesting and evocative view of how the city region and Sheffield in particular, as the main economy, connects and relates to a selection of the districts that surround it. The study team used four broad definitions of the types of relationships, and described these as ‘Independent’, ‘Interdependent’, ‘Dependent’ and ‘Isolated’. These definitions refer to the relationship that the city of Sheffield has with other districts in the city region. These districts will in turn have differing and separate links to other towns and cities. The report describes the city of Sheffield as ‘weakly monocentric’ which means that the links and connections to towns and settlements around it are not as strong and complementary as they should be, and that the city region would benefit from strengthening those relationships.
As only some of the districts were included in the main Sheffield City Region report, the Sheffield City Region Executive Team commissioned an extension report to cover the remainder of the districts that were left out of the original report. This report was completed in January 2010.
The reports are as follows:
· The synthesis report: City Relationships: Economic Linkages in Northern City Regions
· City Relationships: Sheffield City Region / Sheffield City Region Data Annex
· Sheffield City Region Extended Analysis
The rest of the city region reports can be downloaded from the Northern Way website:
Downloads
SCR LEP proposal to Government - September 2010 (947 KB)
Draft update of Sheffield City Region Development Programme (August 2010) (722 KB)
Shaping the Future of the Sheffield City Region Economy (7.06 MB)
This map covers the area that is covered by the work of the Sheffield City Region. (424 KB)
