Council chiefs in Bristol have confirmed that, for the first time, they are considering whether they should use taxpayers’ money to fund a matchday parking scheme in the streets around Ashton Gate.
Bristol City Council’s policy has previously been that any matchday parking scheme which stops people attending events at Ashton Gate from parking in the streets around should be funded by Bristol Sport and Ashton Gate itself.
But now, with no prospect of that appearing likely, mayor Marvin Rees has confirmed that it is something he and the council are considering paying for out of council funds.
Read more: Bristol mayor says there's not enough support for new Residents' Parking Zones
At the most recent Bristol City Council meeting, residents of Ashton Gate, Bedminster and Southville queued up to ask questions about the issue of parking on the streets around the edge of the existing Residents Parking Zone for Southville - which covers streets on the Southville side of North Street.
Residents have long been calling for an extension to the Southville RPZ, and a new one for Bedminster, and say the issues of streets being full of parked cars is not just a problem on matchdays.
Mayor Marvin Rees expressed caution about the idea of expanding or creating new RPZs, saying two surveys done in the past few years have not shown sufficient support for it. But the mayor did say that the only issue that needed addressing was the one about parking on matchdays.
Mr Rees was answering a question from Rachel Hall, who lives in the terraced streets just off Ashton Road, close to the stadium. “On our road and the adjoining narrow one way streets on match days - both rugby and football - as well as on concert dates, we constantly have to deal with dangerous, stupid, selfish parking which has been awful for years and is now even worse,” she told the council.
“People park on or over corners, on pavements and often partially block the entrance and exit on to Ashton Rd. We have long been resigned to not being able to use our cars at these times but if an emergency vehicle had to get down, it would not be able to,” she added.
In response to this question, and others from residents, Mayor Marvin Rees said for the first time that the council was considering funding a new Matchday Parking scheme.
“Parking is always a difficulty near sports stadiums and entertainment venues,” he said. “A residents’ match day parking scheme would need to cover a wide area to ensure issues aren’t just displaced to another area.
“Match day parking schemes also require ongoing funds to cover the enforcement and implementation of the scheme.
“We have surveyed residents in Southville before, and the only overwhelming support is for a match day parking scheme, for which we are considering funding. We are, however, with the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Management Board, looking at identifying a second trial site for Liveable Neighbourhoods once we have learned some clear lessons from the first pilot scheme in East Bristol,” he said.
Why has a Matchday Parking Scheme not happened already?
When Bristol Sport were given the go ahead to rebuild Ashton Gate into a 27,000-seat capacity stadium around eight years ago, a Matchday Parking Scheme was written in as one of the conditions of getting planning permission.
The condition stated that Ashton Gate Stadium would fund a parking scheme if one of two things happened - Bristol City won promotion to the Premier League, or attendances at City home games rose to a certain level.
That condition would be triggered if three out of five consecutive Bristol City home games saw an attendance of more than 25,000. There was no provision for Bristol Bears matches written into the planning consent, because at the time the rugby hadn’t switched to Ashton Gate.
In early 2018, local councillors and residents thought they would be getting a Matchday Parking Scheme when Bristol City’s run to the League Cup semi-final saw them play two sell-out matches against Manchester United and Manchester City. In between, a league game against Wolves also saw a crowd of more than 25,000.
But to the then local councillors’ fury, Ashton Gate pointed out that, since the league game was live on TV, a significant enough number of season ticket holders had stayed at home. That meant that while the published attendance figures was more than 25,000, that was, for legal reporting reasons, the number of people who’d paid for a ticket, not actually attended the match - which was just a bit less than 25,000.
That meant the planning condition had not been triggered, and Ashton Gate did not need to begin to create a Matchday Parking scheme.
Since then, City have come nowhere near promotion, and since the pandemic, attendances have been nearer 20,000.
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