Building a brighter future together: people, prosperity and planet

We are known around the world for the friendly welcomes you give in the UK’s first City of Sanctuary, and for your determined spirit. And this gives communities, neighbourhoods and networks their own unique feel, as well as significant strength. And we are lucky to have you, because you create that sense of what makes Sheffield special. You’re also helping to grow our city. Your businesses, your ideas, your hardworking nature, your families.

As a whole council we want to work with you, with partners and everyone in the city. People have told us that they want meaningful influence over decisions in their communities and by working together to achieve real change will be the driving force behind our future. Every person in this city contributes to Sheffield’s story, so let’s tell our best version of it, together.

You’re the makers, the start-ups, the officers, the academics, the crafters, the poets, the community voices, the hard workers, the athletes, the designers, the creators… you’re enthusiastically turning your talent into success across the city.

To be a successful city for the long term, we need more businesses and more people in Sheffield able to use their talents as part of our growing city so that they are better off and can flourish. By investing wisely and driving economic growth, we are creating opportunities for everyone. Working together with our business sectors and city organisations, we can shape the best environment for Sheffield to prosper and enable everyone to succeed.

We have got a dynamic base of small businesses and we want to enable companies to scale up so that more and better opportunities are made available. We have to make full use of Sheffield’s economic strengths to boost our numbers of businesses and good jobs across the board.

We’re building a thriving city centre full of character and fit for the future, revitalising Castlegate, the place where Sheffield began, and transforming Fargate into a social hub. This has already encouraged major employers to relocate back into our city centre, and our footfall is increasing from not just residents but visitors too. We know that we need to see this revitalisation across our local centres too.

Our city is home to some of the world’s leading work in the manufacturing, health and wellbeing and digital & technology sectors. We must be proud of this: through our incredible Universities, technical colleges, and other education providers we have some of the best talent of today and tomorrow, and the best facilities you can find. Along with our heritage and skilled tradespeople, the future of industry in Sheffield is in safe hands (with a healthy of dose of passion and innovation, too).

It’s time to work together – public, private, and third sector – to be a city where growth represents a progression towards a better future for everyone. A city which thrives sustainably, together.

However ‘green’ you consider yourself to be, you are here, on this planet, and it’s likely that you want the next generation to inherit the world in as good a place as possible. That means change and change on the scale needed will be hard. This is a huge opportunity for Sheffield to transform our quality of life – for now, as well as the future – protecting and respecting the place we live in and ensuring we can thrive in how we respond to the greatest public health threat and opportunity we face in the coming century.

Sheffield is and can be a globally leading city. We are working hard to reduce our emissions and planning how we can decarbonise Sheffield to achieve a thriving, greener, healthier future for all who live, work and study here.

We can transform our transport networks, creating the infrastructure which enables people to get around and improve their health and wellbeing. We can make our homes climate-ready, and make them healthier, better heated places to live. Our ingenuity, skills and expertise can create business opportunities and jobs in the transition to a green economy.

There’s so much to do, and none of us have had to do this before. But a just transition to net zero should bring significant improvements to our quality of life, addressing the threats to our health that also damage our environment, and using retrofit, decarbonisation and green energy as a route to tackling cold, damp homes and fuel poverty.