Dearne Coun Ralph Sixsmith says his Goldthorpe constituents have waited long enough for the work on the regeneration of their town to begin.
Coun Sixsmith's previous post was as chairman of Renaissance Market Towns, who were the first to discuss potential changes with residents. After more consulting and hold-ups, the project is finally starting to gather pace.
The 'masterplan' was drawn up with the help of Renaissance Market Towns back in 2005 but the consultation period hasonly just passed. It was in Coun Sixsmith's view 'good but long-winded.'
Now all of the 107 properties in the targeted area, including those on Main Street, have been acquired by compulsory purchase order and all of the homes will have been knocked down by the end of next month.
Coun Sixsmith is confident the project will now start to take shape after the initial hurdle of consulting and acquiring homes.
He said: "We have been consulted to death for four or five years and had all sorts of different focus groups looking at the complete infrastructure, the housing, the clean and green, the safe routes to work and the general infrastructure of Goldthorpe as it stands now.
"The people of Goldthorpe shouldn't have had this for this many years. The government pulled the monies from Yorkshire Forward, which in turn funded Renaissance Market Town so that's where the money went."
