Hello Folks,

Apologies for the radio silence to all of you who signed our petition. I wanted to start by saying a Huge Thank YOU. Without your signatures, our beloved cafe may no longer be standing - and whilst its not yet been restored, there has been progress - which I cover in detail below.

But firstly, I wanted to let you know about a survey that The Rose Garden Cafe Partnership (which includes the Save the Rose Garden Cafe Campaign Group, Friends of Graves Park and Sheffield City Council - as seen in the photo above) would love for you to contribute to. We need your help to understand how you use/might use the café in Graves park and what you’d like to see happen with the restoration and refurbishment. Your view is important to us and will inform the design proposals, future use of the building and really help with funding bids. You can access the survey by following this link: https://haveyoursay.sheffield.gov.uk/rose-garden-cafe/surveys/rosegardencafesurvey

Please feel free to share this far and wide - the more engagement we have, the stronger our funding bids will be.

So - whats been happening?

 1. Your signatures allowed us to present our petition to the council and your voice was heard. You can read the speech we gave to the council here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KLJbdiD4Wlnqoh62mYUpi1jBTQdyC2SjlPUQ7IBm7-0/edit?usp=sharing

In reaction to the petition the council agreed to engage with us to find a way forwards.

2. The council, as sole corporate trustee of the park, has taken demolition off the table and on 18th October 2023 agreed to put restoration and refurbishment as the highest priority after completing multiple surveys and with pressure from Friends of Graves Park who had their own independent Surveys completed. 

3. The council agreed to work with interested parties in a new and innovative way, to be part of a Rose Garden Cafe Partnership. Learning from the Sheffield Street Tree Partnership, we appointed an Independent Chair, Chris Hallam, who can help us work together in the most effective way. We meet fortnightly and are aiming to move at pace now that this has been organised, though we still expect this to be a long process and we're still working on a number of fundamental underpinning agreements.

4. The Partnership has appointed a  heritage structural engineer from Alan Wood and Partners in Sheffield, to produce a detailed report for us into the structural problems with the cafe wall, including solutions that would be suitable whilst maintaining as much of the exterior as possible. This will commence on the 18th March and we expect the report within 7 weeks.

5. The Partnership has created and now launched the public consultation as we know how important this will be for us to secure funding (as detailed above) - this will run for 5 weeks (Closing on April 19th) and paper copies of the survey will be available in the cafe and other local venues. We will also  be holding stalls in the park for anyone who wants to complete a paper survey or get an in person update. These will be on the 30th and 31st March and again on the 13th April from 9am - 2pm. There will also be ideas boards in the cafe where you can contribute your thoughts.

6. The Partnership has also agreed on our Vision:

The Rose Garden Café Partnership’s vision for the Rose Garden café is....

To understand the current structural state of the building so that it can be fully restored as quickly as is feasible with improvements and refurbishments, for it to be operating as a cafe to serve the community as a sustainable building for future generations.

We want to do this by…

Creating a strategy which considers cost effectiveness, quality, accessibility, environmental impact and the future, so that we can obtain funding to achieve our vision.

7. To date, kind public donations have raised £9,707 towards the restoration and refurbishment of the Cafe - what an amazing amount! THANK YOU! Our focus will soon turn to public Fundraising Events which we'll keep you updated on. If you would still like to donate, you can do so on the FOGP Just Giving page here: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/RoseGardenCafeGravesPark?invite=true

It may seem that our progress is slow, but all discussions we’ve had to date have taken us a step forward - and the building is still standing. This is a very new approach for us (and the council) and we want to make sure we get it right so that our cafe is restored and reopened. We know how much you want it to be safe, secure and restored to former glory- it’s why we’re here.

Please also know that we and FOGP are all volunteers so finding time to progress things at pace isn’t always viable.

Finally, huge thanks to Friends of Graves Park who have been battling for years to retain, improve and protect every facet of our park. They have been open to this new approach, despite many years of a different experience with the council and without them we wouldn’t be where we are today. If you’re not already, we’d strongly recommend joining them and giving your support and input through that longstanding charitable organisation. https://friendsofgravespark.org/

As we're having Partnership meetings fortnightly, I wont spam you that often with progress updates, but will try and post these updates more regularly for you to keep informed.

Thank you once again for your support and making your voice heard.

The Save the Rose Garden Cafe Campaign Team