Connecting Sheffield: City Centre

We started work on the Connecting Sheffield: City Centre project in February 2025. We’ve been replacing kerbing on Pinstone Street near the Town Hall and replacing footways and creating beds for planting towards the bottom of Pinstone Street near The Moor. We’ve also replaced footways and changed lines and signage on Charles Street, and we’re working on Surrey Street to create more room for outdoor seating for cafes and restaurants, and replacing kerbs and the road surface to make walking, wheeling and cycling easier and safer.

We’re starting the next phase of works in December 2025.

Where will the works be?

Pinstone Street

We’ll complete the footway replacement, areas for planting and carriageway surfacing at the bottom of Pinstone Street near The Moor.

Near the Town Hall, we’ll complete the kerb and footway replacement outside the Radisson Blu Hotel, and begin work on the Peace Gardens side of the street to bring it up to the same standard.

We’ll also start work to replace the footways on the section of Pinstone Street between Cross Burgess Street and Charles Street.

This will bring all the footways along Pinstone Street up to the same standard which will make walking and wheeling easier. And we’ll create a more attractive place for people to spend time.

As we work through this phase, and move around the area, we’ll need to make changes to traffic routes to allow our teams to work safely. We’ll keep you updated nearer the time the changes are needed.

Surrey Street

We’ll continue work on Surrey Street to replace kerbs, road surface and footways to make walking, wheeling and cycling easier. During this phase, we expect to complete the section we’re currently working on, and move further along Surrey Street to work further towards the junction with Norfolk Street.

Charles Street

We’ll begin work to allow some future changes on Charles Street near the Q-Park entrance to improve the cycle route in this area. We’ll also replace the footways on the opposite side of the road outside the Roebuck Tavern, and up around Howden House to make walking and wheeling easier.

Arundel Gate

We’ll replace footways either side of the Novotel entrance on Arundel Gate to make walking and wheeling easier. We’ll also remove an island on the Surrey Street side of the Novotel entrance to make it easier for traffic other than buses or taxis to avoid the bus gate.

We expect this phase of work to be finished in April 2026, and that the rest of the project will be complete in autumn 2027.

All businesses will be open as usual during the works, and we’ll make sure you can access them all.

There are still 9,000 parking spaces available in the city centre, and you can find out more about city centre car parking on the Sheffield City Council website. There’s also information about where you can park if you have a Blue Badge.

The City Centre Cycle Hub is open too, with secure cycle storage in the city centre if you’re heading in by cycle. There’s space for adapted cycles and cargo bikes too, and you can access the city centre and Meadowhall hubs with one subscription. Find out more on the City Centre Cycle Hub webpage.

We’ll keep you up to date here as the works progress.

If you usually get off your bus at Carver Street, we're making some changes you need to know about.

From Sunday 7 December, all services using the Carver Street stop will travel via Rockingham Street instead. They will no longer serve the Carver Street stop.

This is part of our work to make bus journeys into the city centre more direct and more reliable. If you need to interchange to another service like the free Sheffield Connect, you can use the Rockingham Street bus hub to do that. But there will be a new stop on Rockingham Street near the junction with West Street if you need to get to this part of the city centre.

The Sheffield Connect SC1 service will continue to use the bus stop on Carver Street, and you’ll still be able to get on or off that service at this stop.

The services that will travel via Rockingham Street instead of Carver Street are:

6, 30, 30a, 52, 52a, 95, 95S, 120, 120k, 181, 257a, 257b and X30.

The new stop on Rockingham Street won’t include a raised kerb to start with. We want to make sure that the new stop doesn’t conflict with traffic signals in the area. If we wait to put in the raised kerb, it will be easier to move the stop if we need to later. This doesn’t mean that buses will be less accessible from this stop though, as most buses can still lower to the existing kerb height or use a ramp.

For more information or to plan your journey, visit TravelSouthYorkshire.com

As part of our work to make bus journeys into the city centre more direct, and to improve safety in the area, we've installed new pedestrian crossings so there are now safer crossing points across all four arms of the junction of Rockingham Street and West Street. And we're continuing work in this area to allow buses to make the turn into Rockingham Street.

We need to change some of the road markings, including in the new loading bay and taxi bay, outside the Jobcentre on West Street. We'll need to do this work overnight, as we can only work in the area when the tram isn't running. We plan to work overnight on Monday 8 December and Tuesday 9 December. There will be temporary traffic lights in place, and we're writing to residents and businesses nearby with more detailed information about the work, which can be noisy.

Bus services will move from the stop on Carver Street to a new stop that we’ll install at the top of Rockingham Street. You'll still be able to interchange to other services at the Rockingham Street bus hub, including the free Sheffield Connect service. But if you need to be in and around West Street, the new stop will be near the junction of Rockingham Street and West Street. The Sheffield Connect will continue to serve the Carver Street stop. We'll provide more information on this soon.

These changes will make bus journeys into the city centre more direct and give easier access to the Rockingham Street bus hub, where passengers can interchange onto other services including the free Sheffield Connect.

Over the last month, we’ve been replacing kerbs on Pinstone Street near the Town Hall and replacing parts of the footways towards the bottom of Pinstone Street around Charles Street. We're about to start the next phase of works, which will include:

• Replacing kerbs and footways from Cheney Row to Cross Burgess Street on the Radisson side of the street to make walking and wheeling easier.
• Replacing footways and carriageway at the bottom of Pinstone Street from Furnival Gate to Charles Street to make walking and wheeling easier.
• Realigning kerbs on Arundel Gate to help direct traffic towards Charles Street rather than the bus gate. This will also help pedestrians by making crossing distances shorter, improving visibility, and creating more opportunity for additional bus facilities.
• Making the left-turn clearer from Furnival Gate into Matilda Way, to direct general traffic away from the new bus gate being implemented north west bound on Furnival Gate between Matilda Way and The Moor.
• Changing the layout around the Q-Park exit on Charles Street to improve the cycle route that passes the car park entrance.
• Replacing the footways and carriageway on Surrey Street, to make walking, wheeling and cycling easier.

So we can do the work at the bottom of Pinstone Street, we’ll need to close the road to vehicle traffic. Vehicles delivering to the Heart of the City will need to follow a diversion from Furnival Gate to Charles Street via Arundel Gate to access Cross Burgess Street. We currently expect this to be in place during the week of Monday 25 August, but please look out for signage on street.

This will mean redirecting traffic through the Furnival Gate bus gate. Because of this, we won't issue penalty charge notices to traffic driving through the bus gate for the duration of the works. We'll put signage up in the area to make this clear, and we’ll communicate when the works are nearly done and the bus gate will return to normal operation.

Before we open up Charles Street (at the Pinstone Street junction) for access to the Heart of the City, we'll also resurface Cross Burgess Street and Cambridge Street. Although parking restrictions on these roads won’t change, the new surface will be the same red colour that we'll use on Pinstone Street. Cyclists will also be able to use these roads in both directions – so we'll update signage to make drivers aware.

With the new kerbing in place on Charles Street, and it being opened up as a through route to enable works on Pinstone Street, we've reassessed access to the five parking bays in this area. We've decided it would be more appropriate to keep them out of use. We're sorry that this is a change to what we’ve told you before – but the spaces were always due to be removed as part of the final project. On and off-street parking will still be available across the city centre, which remains open for business.

You can find more information about other parking in the city centre on our website: https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/parking/city-centre-car-parking

On Surrey Street, we’ll work from Fargate down to 43 Surrey Street, Bird Opticians. We will close the road in this section to outside Bird Opticians, but will keep an area clear for businesses to load and unload while the closure is in place. We will also add new temporary disabled parking bays on Surrey Street, which will be accessible during the works but removed as part of the final scheme. The temporary bays will be available at all times on the Town Hall side and during the evening only on the opposite side.

Following conversations with businesses during consultation, we will advertise a new Traffic Regulation Order to enable the permanent loading arrangement on Surrey Street. We currently expect this consultation to start towards the end of August.

All businesses will be open as usual during the works, and we’ll make sure you can access them all.

We expect to do most of the works during the week, from 9am to 5pm, but we will be working some evenings during weeks commencing Monday 18 August and Monday 25 August to replace the paving on Charles Street. We need to work nights to avoid disruption to businesses as the work is close to entrances.

Although we’ll work in phases, we expect some work to continue in these areas until the project is complete, which we currently expect to be in Autumn 2027.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, you can let us know by email.

We're progressing well with the work around the junction of Rockingham Street and West Street to make crossing safer for pedestrians. We're also working to enable buses to turn into Rockingahm Street to make public transport journeys into the city centre quicker and more reliable.

We’ve almost finished the works on the footway outside the Jobcentre, and we're starting work outside West Street Live.

After speaking to businesses in the area, we'll complete all the works in this area and outside the other bars nearby during July and August, ahead of Fresher’s week in September. This next phase of works will involve paving the footway (including the old loading bay, which will become part of a widened footway), kerbing, ducting, drainage, and signage.

We won't be working during Tramlines weekend, Friday 25 to Sunday 27 July. For travel information for Tramlines, visit the Travel South Yorkshire website.

We removed the temporary ‘lego bricks’ along West Street on Saturday 12 July, replacing them with alternative measures for now. We also added regular gaps in the fencing around the work site to maintain safety. A more permanent solution is part of this section of works and we expect to install this during the week commencing Monday 21 July.

You'll still be able to access all the premises in the area, and the taxi rank and loading area opposite West Street Live will be useable until September this year.

We started work on the Connecting Sheffield: City Centre project in February 2025. We’ve been replacing kerbing on Pinstone Street near the Town Hall, and replacing footways towards the bottom of Pinstone Street around Charles Street.

This will help to create more space for people, make the area more attractive and support our cleaner, greener, thriving city centre.

We’re about to start replacing the footway on Charles Street itself, on the Post Office side of the road.

Work will start in this area on Monday 7 July, and we expect it to last for around five weeks. To make sure our contractors can work safely, we need to suspend the parking bays on Charles Street while we do these works.

We understand this may cause some disruption, and we apologise for the inconvenience. You can find information on alternative parking in the city centre on the Sheffield City Council website.

We're starting work on Saturday 24 May to change the junction of West Street and Rockingham Street.

We will change the junction with West Street to include pedestrian crossings all around the junction, and to allow buses to turn into Rockingham Street. We'll make the section of Rockingham Street between West Street and Division Street two-way for all traffic, and we will introduce a southbound bus gate between Devonshire Lane and Wellington Street. This will give buses travelling towards Charter Row priority access. It will also make bus journeys into the city centre quicker and more direct, and create a safer environment for pedestrians.

Planned works

We will do the work to enable the changes between Saturday 24 May 2025 and Friday 28 November 2025.

The first phase of the works will replace the kerbs and paving and improve drainage at the junction of Rockingham Street and West Street. These works will take place from Saturday 24 May 2025 to Friday 30 May 2025. We'll work alongside a separate Supertram closure taking place that week to minimise disruption.

Once we've completed these initial works, we'll move to start work on the footway on the side of the junction outside the Bailey Court Jobcentre. These works will take place between Monday 2 June 2025 and Tuesday 1 July 2025. We'll be replacing kerbs and paving here, and adding ducting and street furniture.

We're also planning further works between Wednesday 2 July 2025 and Friday 28 November 2025, We'll keep this page up to date with more details nearer the time.

Managing disruption

We will do the first phase of works alongside the planned Supertram closure. This means we can avoid needing a separate closure, which will reduce the impact on local residents, businesses and road users.

Replacement bus services will run during the tram closure from Saturday 24 May to Friday 30 May. There's more information on these below.

So our teams can carry out the first phase of work safely and effectively, we'll need to use some temporary traffic management. This will include:

• Temporary four-way traffic lights regulating road traffic from each arm of the junction of West Street and Rockingham Street.
• Temporary fences and blocks on the footways as we’re working. We'll only put these up around the sections we’re working in. This will reduce the impact on pedestrians and ensure we can keep footway access along at least one side of the road throughout the works.

You'll still be able to access restaurants, bars and nightclubs near the junction throughout the works.

When we start work outside the Bailey Court Jobcentre between Monday 2 June 2025 and Tuesday 1 July 2025, we'll need to use temporary traffic measures so our teams can work safely and effectively. These will include:

• Closing the footway to pedestrians between 7am and 7pm each day. We'll reopen the footways in the evenings and overnight, and we’ll maintain access to the Jobcentre. You can cross the road using the nearby crossings at Carver Street and outside Tesco Express.
• A one-way closure of the section of Rockingham Street between Portobello Street and West Street for motor vehicles travelling towards West Street. Vehicles will be diverted along Portobello Lane and Mappin Street.

We'll also need to suspend the bus stop outside the Jobcentre so our teams can work on site. Buses will use the nearby stop on Carver Street instead during the works. Once the changes are introduced, and buses can turn into Rockingham Street, we will remove the stop outside the Jobcentre.

We won't need to do any night working as part of this first phase of works.

We'll do all we can to reduce the impact on local residents. We apologise in advance for any disturbance this may cause.

Replacement bus services

While we're working and trams aren't running to Cathedral from Saturday 24 May to Friday 30 May, replacement bus services will run for the Blue and Yellow tram routes. They'll serve some bus stops along the affected routes.

The BL1 service will run between Cathedral and Malin Bridge and the YE1 service will run between Cathedral and Middlewood, serving limited bus stops located near all the affected tram stops along the routes as follows: 

The BL1 and YE1 services will operate:

• Monday to Saturday: every 20 minutes in the early morning, every 12 minutes during the day and every 30 minutes in the evening
• Sunday: every 20 minutes in the early morning and during the day, and every 30 minutes in the evening

The BL1 and YE1 services will operate via Langsett Road during the day and Penistone Road after 7pm.

You can find out more about the replacement bus services and timetables on the Travel South Yorkshire website.

You can use any valid tram or multi-modal ticket to travel on the BL1 and BL2 replacement bus services.

Implementing the changes

We will implement most of these changes initially through an Experimental Traffic Order (ETO), so we can trial them before deciding whether to make them permanent, amend them or remove them.

But we will install some elements, such as the pedestrian crossings, as permanent features straight away through a separate Traffic Regulation Order (TRO).

ETOs can stay in place for a maximum of 18 months while we monitor and assess the effects. You can provide formal feedback on an ETO for the first six months after it’s implemented.

More information and getting in touch

We'll keep this page up to date as the project continues. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments, you can contact us through the following channels:

• Email: info@connecting-sheffield.co.uk
• 9am-5pm Freephone: 0808 196 5105
• Freepost: Freepost Connecting SHF

We’re starting work on our Connecting Sheffield: City Centre project to make walking, wheeling and cycling easier.

We’re working in phases to keep disruption to a minimum while we make current temporary infrastructure permanent.

On Monday 10 February, we’ll begin to replace some of the kerbing outside the Town Hall on Pinstone Street. This initial phase will involve a short stretch of footway and a layby, and we’ll finish here in early April. We’ll complete the rest in a later phase of work.

We’ll also be working to replace a section of the temporary footway and remove the double kerbs at the other end of Pinstone Street, close to the top of The Moor, on the Union Street side of the road. We expect this area to be finished in May.

We’re working with residents and businesses in the area too to keep them informed about our plans and work schedule, but we will make sure we maintain access to all shops and other businesses in the area affected.

When the work is complete, these areas on Pinstone Street will be more attractive and improving the footways will make it easier to get around our cleaner, greener, thriving city centre.

We’ll keep you updated as the works progress here.

South Yorkshire’s Mayor, Oliver Coppard, has approved £21 million of investment into the Connecting Sheffield: City Centre project.

The funding will help to deliver the project, improving public spaces and connecting key developments like the improvements on Fargate, Heart of the City and The Moor.

Cllr Ben Miskell, Chair of the Transport, Regeneration and Climate Policy Committee said,

“Sheffield is changing, it’s transforming into an incredible city offering something for everyone whether you’re a resident here or visiting from further afield. Our Connecting Sheffield: City Centre project links up all we have to offer, from great shops to services, dining and entertainment offerings we now got in the Heart of the City, our fantastic shopping experience at The Moor and the new Fargate project as it nears completion. This investment will contribute further to the ongoing transformation of our cleaner, greener, thriving city centre.

“By giving you more space in the city centre, and more choice in how you travel, we can reduce congestion on the roads to make bus journeys more reliable, and give you safer walking, wheeling and cycling routes that will connect to other parts of the city. We’ve already created more direct routes for buses in the centre too, and the Connecting Sheffield: City Centre project will make travelling into the city centre by bus an even more realistic option.”

Construction is due to start on the project in January 2025, and the Traffic Regulation Orders to make the required changes to roads are being advertised until Thursday 17 October. To view the orders and comment, visit https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/roads-pavements/traffic-orders

Oliver Coppard, South Yorkshire’s Mayor, said: “Building a healthier, wealthier and happier South Yorkshire is central to my ambition as South Yorkshire’s Mayor.

“This important city centre project will not just give us greater freedom and choice about how we travel and move, but will also support our plans to make South Yorkshire the healthiest region in the country.

“It is part of the steps we are taking across our region to build new walking and cycling routes over the next three years - creating better places and more opportunities for us all to move more and move differently.”

Funding was approved by the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) Board on 8 October and forms part of SYMCA’s £166 million Transforming Cities Fund investment across South Yorkshire.

You may have noticed that there's more space on the footways on Pinstone Street and Leopold Street recently.

Now that buses are using more direct routes through the city centre, we've removed the shelters on these streets to open up the footways. This will create more room for people, and for events, as part of the Connecting Sheffield: City Centre project to improve our public spaces and connect key developments in the city centre.

Pinstone Street with bus shelters removed