Sheffield Council Rejects Retrodome’s Planning Shortcut Bid

Sheffield Council has rejected an application that would have let a retro arcade venue called Retrodome open a second branch without a full planning review. The Thompson family behind Retrodome must now file a complete planning application for the Allen Street site, taking the route any future opening has to run through. That swaps the simpler path the family had been betting on for a longer, formal review, and pushes back the hoped-for summer launch on a former gym near Kelham Island.

Retrodome runs as a pay-to-enter arcade in Barnsley, where visitors pay a single fee at the door and then play the machines inside for free. The Sheffield branch was being lined up for the former Kit Locker gym, and the family had been working toward opening later this summer.

Council Rejects Bid to Skip Full Planning Permission

Sheffield Council has turned down a request for a Lawful Development Certificate for the venue. The certificate is the route operators try first when they believe a building can already host a new use under existing planning permission. Without it, a full planning application has to be made. The decision means the project cannot start on Allen Street until that full application is filed and approved.

Council officers said the plans would amount to a change of use into a ‘gaming arcade/family entertainment centre use.’ ‘Planning permission is therefore required,’ their report on the application adds. The hoped-for summer launch slips as a result, and the Allen Street site now sits in a different queue than the family had planned for.

A Family Entertainment Centre in All but Name

The application paperwork describes Retrodome in detail, and the picture that emerges is closer to a community venue than a coin-op arcade. Council officers recycled the planning consultant’s wording in their own report on the rejected application, so what follows is the council’s formal characterisation of the business.

Retrodome is a family entertainment centre where people pay a fee to enter the building to allow them to play on gaming machines for free. This business does not have any coin entry machines or gambling machines on site, except for two bandits within the bar area.

That two bandits carve-out sets Retrodome apart from the kind of seaside and city-centre amusement arcades that local planning teams often scrutinise on gambling grounds. The rest of the floor is taken up with arcade machines, pinball and air hockey, with a mix of vintage titles and more recent releases. The planning paperwork notes that ‘many of their gaming machines could be considered to be vintage gaming machines, hence the inclusion of Retro in their business name.’

The Barnsley venue’s visitor mix underlines the pitch. Operators say their guests are ‘principally friends and families who are there for recreation and spending time together.’ The venue hosts organised school trips, scout groups, and amateur football clubs on visits that often run to several hours. The Sheffield plans add food service and a bar to that template, and the family retains that language for the full planning submission.

From the Barnsley Original to Allen Street

The Sheffield branch is planned for the former Kit Locker gym on Allen Street, a short walk from Kelham Island and well placed for footfall from the wider Neepsend and Kelham corridor. It would be the second Retrodome, scaling up a model that has run in Barnsley since 2019.

Retrodome opened on Barnsley’s Upper New Street in May of that year, inside the former Unipart Automotive premises near the town’s Morrisons. The launch collection ran to more than 40 games including Space Invaders and Pac-Man. The brand is run by Phillip Thompson alongside his sons Chris and Luke, a family operation that has since added a console room, a VR arena and a warehouse floor of upright cabinets.

Trade publication Coinslot framed the launch in ambitious terms. The adult entry fee at the Barnsley venue is set at £12.95 for a single-entry ticket. The family describes the cabinet collection on site as ‘a massive warehouse full of upright arcade machines.’ That upfront-fee ticket keeps Retrodome on a single-payment model, where the 80s arcades it evokes ran on coins per play. See trade coverage of the planned Sheffield expansion for the fuller Coinslot framing of the launch.

• Launch: May 2019, Upper New Street, Barnsley (former Unipart Automotive, near Morrisons)
• Founders: Phillip Thompson with sons Chris and Luke
• Catalogue at launch: 40+ games including Space Invaders and Pac-Man
• Pricing: £12.95 adult entry, no coin machines on the floor
• Gambling machines on site: 2 bandits in the bar area
• Sheffield site: former Kit Locker gym, Allen Street, near Kelham Island

The family wants to repeat the same template in Sheffield, with food service and a bar on site. The Allen Street site is the venue they are betting on, with the same recipe the Barnsley operation has run on since 2019.

Why This Counts as a Change of Use

The council’s objection comes down to what the building is permitted to be used for today, and whether the new use fits within that existing permission. A Lawful Development Certificate is granted only when the council agrees the proposed use is already lawful at the site. If officers decide the proposed use is materially different, the certificate cannot be issued and full planning consent takes its place. In Sheffield’s planning rules, that determination rests with the council’s planning officers acting on a written report.

Officers treated the proposal as a change of use into a gaming arcade and family entertainment centre, a use class of its own under the local plan. Even with the modest scale of the venue and the absence of coin machines on the floor, that classification triggers a fuller review of traffic, opening hours, neighbour impact and licensing. None of those questions can be settled under a Lawful Development Certificate.

The Thompsons retain room to make their case in that wider review. The Barnsley operation continues to trade on the same model, and a formal submission will let the operators set out the family-friendly case in writing for a planning officer, neighbour consultation, and councillors to weigh. Any measures they offer to address neighbours around the Allen Street site can be locked into the formal application as well. The case the family puts to the council is the same one Retrodome has run in Barnsley since 2019.

The Path Forward and the Missing Summer

The Thompsons now need to file a full planning application for the Allen Street site if they want to proceed there, as covered in the original Sheffield Star report on the rejection. That submission will set out the proposed hours, signage, food and bar operation, and any measures to address neighbour concerns. A planning officer will then prepare a recommendation for councillors or decide the case under delegated powers.

No date for that submission has been reported, and the operators have not publicly committed to one. The full planning application route gives the family a chance to put the family-entertainment case in writing for the city team to weigh. That case will lean on the existing visitor profile: friends and families on days out, organised school trips, scout groups, and amateur football clubs. The two bandits in the bar area can be cited as evidence that gambling is not the proposition in front of the council.

For a scheme that had its sights on a summer launch, the rejection ends any near-term opening date. The Allen Street site sits in the council’s planning queue until a full application is filed, validated and decided. The Barnsley operation trades through all of it.

The decision pushes the opening back into a calendar the city team now controls. With no submission date yet reported, the rest of the summer is no longer the target.

Beyond the Coin Slot

The Retrodome model has always sat a step away from the dim gaming arcades of British seaside towns. Visitors pay once at the door and play the floor for as long as they like, which is closer to a soft-play attraction than the coin-per-play model of the 1980s. No 10p slot, no per-play fee. The arcades the venue evokes took coins per play; Retrodome runs on a single upfront ticket. The cabinet collection that started as a Worsbrough Dale hobby is the through-line; see the 2019 launch of the original Barnsley arcade for the family background at the time of opening.

The cabinet mix is part of the pitch, and Barnsley runs classic upright cabinets, pinball, air hockey, consoles and a VR arena. The collection goes back to Phillip and Chris Thompson’s hobby at the family home in Worsbrough Dale.

• Classic upright arcade cabinets (Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and other vintage titles)
• Pinball machines
• Air hockey tables
• A console room with SNES and Sega Mega Drive
• A virtual reality arena

Luke Thompson brought seven years of bar experience to the front-of-house design. The Allen Street site is the test of whether that recipe scales outside Barnsley. The Coinslot headline that ran with the planning application framed the expansion as part of the wider UK retro arcade revival.

Sheffield Council’s planning decision does not foreclose that test. It resets the order in which it has to be made. The family retains the same operating pitch, the same family entertainment framing, and a Barnsley site that demonstrates what the model looks like in practice.

The original summer target is off the table. Once the application lands, the timetable runs through the planning file. The Barnsley operation continues to trade while that file plays out.