Peter Thompson, assistant director for Regeneration Creative Sheffield, yesterday spoke at a City Lofts sponsored seminar at the Mercure St Paul's Hotel about the regeneration of Sheffield city centre.

"A lot has happened but there's still a lot happening. There's about 800,000 square ft of offices on sites being built at the moment, and there is more in the pipe line," he said.

Thompson took the about 40 attendees of the property seminar on a virtual tour of the new Sheffield City Centre, going the 'Golden Route' from the station to the Peace Gardens and up to the City Hall.

Click on the green play icon to listen to Peter's talk online or download his talk as podcast

In his talk Thompson summed up what has happened so far in Sheffield, and revealed what is still to come.

"It's about moving from this recovery which we have been over the last sort of eight years, into what we've called the transformation, actually making it permanent and real. Just to get to where Sheffield is at the average level we need to create a net additional 30,000 new jobs by 2020," said Thompson.

"What that means in terms of the City Centre is that we need to move the whole economy to more, excuse the phrase, but a bit more higher value added type activity, a bit more service economy rather than manufacturing. And that equates to about 16,000 new jobs in the city centre in office based activity by 2020. Looking at that in floor space terms, that's about three million square ft of new floor space over the next 12 years."

Also speaking at Tuesday's seminar was property investor Graham Bates from Leeds, who gave people advice on what to look for as an investor in today's property market. Hear Bates' talk