Don Valley Corridor

The Don Valley Corridor is where South Yorkshire is rebuilding the UK’s industrial future. Stay Near, Go Far

A powerhouse of clean energy, advanced manufacturing and world-leading innovation. Stretching from Sheffield to Rotherham, it’s a 30 year transformation creating thousands of high-skill jobs, thriving communities, and a renewed sense of pride and prosperity.

The innovation and industry from here once powered the world, as the foundation of the industrial revolution. Now, we’re determined to make sure those same places – the communities that once stood at the forefront of global change – have the opportunity to not just embrace the technologies and industries of the fourth industrial revolution, but to shape, make and create them.

Workers in a foundry or steelworks with molten metal

Key Stats

10000

New Homes

18000

New Jobs

£1.3bn

GVA

Large industrial turbine or engine component in a workshop

Hardwiring Inclusive Growth into South Yorkshire

The Don Valley Corridor project is built around a community first model of regeneration — ensuring that economic growth directly improves the lives of people within our communities. This includes:

This includes:

  • Ensuring local people shape development and have access to opportunities – keeping the benefits in the Don Valley Corridor area
  • Creating direct pathways through sector workforce plans, linking communities into skills and jobs across clean energy, health tech, digital, AI, robotics and defence
  • Combining housing, transport, work, health improvements and neighbourhood renewal in priority areas.
  • Supporting prevention and child-health innovation, by anchoring the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park and the NHS National Centre for Child Health Technology in local employment and community health.

The Don Valley will not only grow the economy, but it will also widen opportunity and improve outcomes for the people who live closest to it.

Urban street or plaza with trees and buildings

Thousands of New Homes & Connected Neighbourhoods

Across the Don Valley Corridor, there is capacity for 10,500 new homes, creating sustainable, walkable and well-connected neighbourhoods that support modern urban living and attract talent.

What the programme will deliver:

  • A new garden community at Bassingthorpe, with green spaces, new schools, health facilities and strong active-travel and rail links to Rotherham town centre.
  • Rotherham town centre housing, enabled by infrastructure investment and long-term delivery partnerships focused on town centre renewal
  • The evolution of Attercliffe, into a vibrant innovation district that brings together new homes, modern workspaces, transport and community facilities.
  • Higher density living around Sheffield Station Campus ensuring the city centre Innovation Spine is populated with talent, residents and mixed-use space, integrated with public transport connectivity.

This is about delivering the types of well-connected neighbourhoods — and the quality of life — that help South Yorkshire thrive.

Worker in protective gear in a foundry with molten metal pour

A Unified Innovation & Industry Corridor

The Don Valley Corridor will evolve into a connected innovation and industry corridor, enabling more than 18,000 new jobs across Sheffield and Rotherham.

It brings together research, manufacturing, housing and community assets to create one of the UK’s most accessible innovation ecosystems

Including

  • Sheffield Innovation Spine: A continuous researchtoproduction corridor from Sheffield Station Campus to the University of Sheffield, with new labs, startup space and corporategrade R&D facilities.
  • Attercliffe Renaissance: A transformed district delivering 3,000 homes, commercial space for 1,500 jobs and expansion of the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park’s health, sport and worktech industries – demonstrating the economic value of health and wellbeing. 
  • Waverley & Advance Manufacturing Park Expansion: Growth of the UK’s leading advanced manufacturing district, adding 2,000 jobs and 1.5m sq ft of new R&D space at Runway Park.
  • Rotherham Gateway Innovation Campus: A new raillinked innovation hub around the future mainline station, supporting engineering, lowcarbon, materials and digital sectors.

Together, these projects embed high value job creation directly within local communities, connecting people to the region’s most powerful innovation assets.

Exterior of an industrial or commercial building with SBD branding

Connecting, Decarbonising
and Protecting the Don Valley

The Don Valley programme is underpinned by large scale infrastructure that will support a resilient,
low carbon regional economy. Transport, energy and climate resilience upgrades create the foundations for long-term growth, including:

A new mainline Rotherham station (Northern Powerhouse Rail)

Heat network zoning and expansion

Major flood protection along the River Don

This infrastructure will enable the region’s transition to a cleaner, smarter and more connected economy.

How we will unlock Don Valley’s Most Strategic Land

Much of the Don Valley Corridor’s most important land has been held back by contamination, low land values and viability constraints. This programme directly addresses those barriers, shifting the development market and enabling regeneration at scale.

Key locations include Rotherham Gateway, where the programme underpins the new inter-city station and wider innovation district, and Templeborough, which will be reshaped into a modern green energy hub and employment zone.

This is where South Yorkshire demonstrates its ability to unlock strategic brownfield sites and change its investment conditions permanently.

Street view of an industrial or retail area with signage

The Don Valley Corridor is open for investment, partnership and collaboration.

Whether you’re a developer, investor, business or community organisation, we’d love to hear from you.

enquiries@southyorkshire-ca.gov.uk