Doncaster Council will 'reinvent' Waterdale with housing and green space, Mayor Jones says
Waterdale shopping centre is just one of the city locations Doncaster Council is looking to “reinvent”.
The City of Doncaster Council will “revitalise” a little-used section of the city centre with housing and green spaces, Mayor Ros Jones has said.
However, the Mayor stopped short of offering assurances that parts of the Waterdale area, which the council intends to purchase the freehold for, will not be demolished as part of the project.
“We’ll be planning to do building. We’ll be building homes for the future, actually in the centre of town, we’ll be actually altering the town centre for the right reasons” she said in an interview.
Mayor Jones pointed to the 7,000-8,000 people on the housing waiting list in Doncaster and said the redevelopment of Waterdale, as well as projects at Colonnades and the Waterfront, would help address that.
Pressed again on whether demolishing the buildings on the south side of Kingsgate would be necessary for housebuilding, the Mayor said it’d be a matter for the “master planner”.
The potential to redevelop Waterdale, which is now a shadow of its former self as a busy shopping centre, was unlocked by the move to bring ‘Health on the High Street’ to the site.
Mayor Jones said regeneration will “reinvent part of the city centre fit for the 21st Century”.
Doncaster Council signed a lease with the owners of ‘The Village’ unit on Kingsgate and a sub-lease with the Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Trust (RDaSH) in April 2026.
The move will see RDaSH offer children and young people’s mental health services from the city centre, but also unlocks an option for Doncaster Council to take ownership of a significant portion of Waterdale.
Whilst a number of units in the shopping centre are left empty, there are numerous businesses operating successfully in the parts of Waterdale the council could come to own.
It includes popular units like the Little Goat Coffee Co and Vault 14, a comic book shop which often has queues outside on big release dates.
Mayor Jones told the LDRS the next steps were to go out to the market for a developer of the regenerations.
She said: “We’ll be going out. You test the market, don’t you. A proper procurement, you don’t just bring someone in off the street.
“We’ll ensure we get the best deal for our residents and for our businesses.”
Cabinet papers from January 2026, when Mayor Jones and her Labour colleagues began the procurement process, suggest Doncaster Council hope the regeneration of Waterdale to be complete in 2030.
The timeline doesn’t forecast work to begin at the site until July 2027 or beyond.