Site Visit Support Pack

On 8^th August 2026 the Leader of Sheffield City Council, Councillor Fran Belbin, and the Leader of the Green Group, Councillor Angela Argenzio, spent two hours in Handsworth visiting the two proposed Green Belt allocations in S13 - SES29 at Handsworth Hall Farm and SES30 at Bramley Lane and Beaver Hill Road.

These are the briefings we prepared for that visit.

What we are not saying

We are not against housing. Every developable site in S13 has already been built on, and this community has never previously objected in numbers to any of those developments.

We are not against the Sheffield Plan – that has never been in question. We support its environmental standards, its affordable housing, and the nine in ten homes that are not on Green Belt land.

But we cannot stand by while our community is harmed these Green Belt releases that promote the overdevelopment of S13, and by development we believe is neither appropriate nor justified nor sustainable.

What we are saying

Our objection is to site selection and distribution. 43% of the city's additional Green Belt housing - 1,700 homes - is concentrated in Handsworth: one part of one ward, along roughly a kilometre of road, in a community of about 9,000 people. That rises to over 2,000 homes if the land currently set aside for a school and a burial ground is also built on.

That is more than the population of Bakewell, added to one community.

No road improvements are committed to beyond a single set of traffic lights, and no new or additional community facilities are guaranteed. Waverley's remaining 2,000 homes sit immediately across the boundary, in the same plan period, under a different authority and in no Sheffield count.

The visit itself

Two documents set the scene: the note that introduced the pack, and the route we walked on the day.

• Cover note
  Who we are, what we are and are not saying, and why this is a Local Plan matter rather than one for the planning application stage.
  📄 Download (PDF)
• Route and timings
  The route walked on the day, the arrival points at each site, the proposed accesses to SES29 and SES30, and the timings.
  📄 Download (PDF)

The ten briefing sheets

Each sheet is a single subject, with its own sources.

• 1 · SES29 fact sheet
  What is proposed at Handsworth Hall Farm, and on what evidence.
  📄 Download (PDF)
• 2 · SES30 fact sheet
  The same for Bramley Common.
  📄 Download (PDF)
• 3 · Overdevelopment of the local area
  About 6,700 homes built or planned within 2 km since 2012, in a small community.
  📄 Download (PDF)
• 4 · SES30 evidence problems
  Seven scored judgements contradicted by the Council's own documents.
  📄 Download (PDF)
• 5 · Open space deficiency
  A 34.55 hectare shortfall of open space was recorded by Sheffield City Council before these allocations were proposed.
  📄 Download (PDF)
• 6 · Density
  Can we build smarter to avoid building on Green Belt? Leeds achieves 85 homes a hectare where Sheffield plans for 35 to 50.
  📄 Download (PDF)
• 7 · SES30 concept plan
  No school, no burial ground and no ecological buffers on the Council's own illustration.
  📄 Download (PDF)
• 8 · Site availability
  Three council-owned tenanted farms, three different answers on their availability.
  📄 Download (PDF)
• 9 · Consultation
  During the formation of the Sheffield Plan, the public was asked twice, said no Green Belt, and was not asked again.
  📄 Download (PDF)
• 10 · Green Belt Map, 1937
  Sheffield's Green Belt as it was first drawn.
  📄 Download (PDF)

On the figures

Each sheet carries its own sources. Where a figure is campaign arithmetic rather than a published number, it is identified as such.

If anything here does not stand up, we would rather know before the vote than after it. Email us at info@saves13greenbelt.org.uk with corrections.