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Bristol Post

National

Tristan Cork

Knowle 'can't cope' with scale of 'Redcatch Quarter' warn local residents

Knowle (Geopolitical Entity) South Bristol (Location) Broadwalk

Residents of Knowle fighting plans for a huge development to replace the Broadwalk Shopping Centre say they are saddened and angered by a council officers' report which recommends the project be given planning permission.

The decision on the scheme to demolish the shopping centre, multi-storey car park and snooker hall and build 817 apartments in blocks up to 12-storeys high will be made by councillors next Wednesday. Earlier this week, Bristol Live broke the news that the recommendation is that planning permission is given, with council officers saying that, on balance, it should go ahead.

Laura Chapman, from the Knowle Neighbourhood Planning Group, said she felt planning officers had simply 'cut and pasted' statements on key issues from the developers' own statements, and claimed there had been little scrutiny on a scheme which will fundamentally change Knowle forever.

"It feels like it's been a foregone conclusion for a while," she said. "And that's really sad. We were hopeful that the issues with the numbers of affordable homes being so low would make the council question whether this was the right project for this site in the first place, but it seems they are just going to deal with that later, after giving it planning permission," she added.

"No one thinks there should be no housing development there, but this is not a project that contributes to the local area, and it really will detract from the amenities in Knowle, from the park, the residents who live nearby and the pressure on things like parking, traffic, and the provision of GPs and healthcare.

"The assessments on whether this area of Knowle will be able to cope with another 2,000 residents are very scant, and all the things the developer says, and the planning officers say don't match with our lived experience - there's a big gap between what it says on paper and the reality of not being able to get a dentist's appointment, or a place in a school for your children, at the moment, and that's before 817 new flats are built."

Ms Chapman said the campaigners that have been discussing the project for the past 18 months will aim to lobby councillors next Wednesday, and are asking for the decision to be deferred to allow a site visit to take place, with concerns over the impact of having three tall, 12-storey buildings, fronting onto Redcatch Park and the surrounding streets.

"A quarter of the homes they tested to see whether the new buildings would impact the light through the windows, failed those tests - and those tests are a really low bar to overcome in the first place. There will be homes where people downstairs will pretty much be plunged into shadow all the time because of this," claimed Ms Chapman.

"There are a lot of things just inaccurate about the planners' report to the councillors. It's things like the fact the developer says there are seven bus routes that serve this location, and the planning officers just repeat that. There might have been seven routes once, but all but two of the statements about the routes are inaccurate, since bus routes have been cut. This is important, because there'll be little or no car parking with these 817 flats, so how are those new residents going to move about the city?" she added.

Artist's impressions of a proposed new development, to replace the Broadwalk Shopping Centre at Knowle (Redcatch Quarter)

A huge number of people have objected to the scheme, which would see the entire site levelled and a new library, dentists and community cinema and theatre space created along with the apartment buildings and a new pedestrian street from the Wells Road through to Redcatch Park.

But although some 241 people or organisations have objected to the scheme, which will be decided by councillors next week, there have been 62 letters of support, including from the two local councillors for the area.

Along with concerns over the sheer size and scale of the development, the height of the buildings and questions about where the residents of 817 new flats would park their cars, go to school or the doctors, one of the main sticking points has been the number of affordable homes - the flats that would be handed over to a housing association to rent to people on the council housing waiting list at a reduced rate - that could be included.

One of the key delays and controversies over the plans was the lack of affordable housing - homes to be rented by a housing association to people on the council housing waiting list. Developers will be told to increase the number of affordable homes they have to include, if they want to be given planning permission to build 'Redcatch Quarter'.

Artist's impressions of a proposed new Redcatch Quarter development, to replace the Broadwalk Shopping Centre at Knowle, as seen from Redcatch Park (Redcatch Quarter)

Council officers said they’ve done their own sums on whether or not the developers planning to knock down the Broadwalk Shopping Centre should be able to include more new homes that can be rented out to people on the housing waiting list - and decided that they can.

With 817 new homes, the council’s policy is that at least 20 per cent - preferably 30 per cent - should be classed as ‘affordable’. But the developers included just 55 affordable homes, that’s less than seven per cent, and around three times fewer than the minimum they are supposed to.

Council housing chief Cllr Tom Renhard wrote to the developers earlier this year to demand more homes, saying he could not support the project unless they did, but the developers hit back, saying that because they would be spending a small fortune demolishing the 50 year old shopping centre and all the other buildings first, they couldn’t afford to take the loss on including more affordable homes, without it impacting on their profits.

The developers submitted a financial viability report to back up their claim, so council planning officers hired consultants to do the same calculations. And they found that there was more room to increase the number of affordable homes, before it made the entire project unviable.

So council planners are now recommending that the developers be forced to increase the number of affordable homes from 55 to 80 - and that increase should be made part of the planning permission - although that’s still just 9.8 per cent of the overall total.

Artist's impressions of the proposed new 'Redcatch Quarter' shopping centre to replace Broad Walk in Knowle (Keep Architecture Ltd)

In the report to councillors ahead of next week's decision, planning officers said that they should give the developers planning permission, with the instructions to housing officers to continue to negotiate around the number and type of affordable homes that will be included. “Housing colleagues have requested that at this point in time the tenure of the affordable housing is delegated to housing officers to be agreed as the scheme comes forward,” the report’s author said. “This is because it is possible that as well as standard open market housing, the scheme may include specific housing for older persons, and an element of Build to Rent.

“By not specifying type and tenure at this stage it enables the type of affordable housing to be tailored to the type of housing delivered as part of the scheme. It will also make it easier to facilitate the provision of additional affordable housing which could potentially be delivered via the use of Homes England Grant Funding if that became available,” they added.

Councillors will make the final decision on the scheme next Wednesday, although campaigners in Knowle who have battling to object to the plans said they want councillors to defer a decision and come and visit the site to see the scale of the proposal.

If it does get the go-ahead, the shopping centre would - after a time - close down completely, and then be demolished, along with the multi-storey car park and snooker hall, before work begins on constructing the new ‘Redcatch Quarter’ later in the 2020s.

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