Petitioners have urged City Hall bosses to stop allowing new housing to be built on green spaces in Bristol. While some countryside sites around the city have recently seen more protection from development, others are still at risk from hundreds of planned new homes.
After more than 7,000 petitioned Bristol City Council to stop building on green spaces, councillors debated how the city should find the balance between solving the housing crisis while trying to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change, on December 10.
Nasim Dumont, presenting the petition, said it was an “absolute travesty” that green spaces were potentially being destroyed, and called on the council to prioritise new buildings on previously developed “brownfield” sites. The council is currently replacing its Local Plan, an important document setting out how and where major new developments should be built.
Read more: More than 7,000 petition city council to stop building on Bristol’s green spaces
Ms Dumont said: “We are still witnessing the potential loss of Brislington Meadows and other green spaces. Even Novers Hill is still under threat with an application from a private developer. It’s an absolute travesty that we are seeing highly biodiverse and ecologically important green spaces potentially destroyed.
“We don’t deny that Bristol has a housing crisis, but this petition is asking to prioritise brownfield sites. It would be fairer to say we have a housing affordability crisis, and no amount of new housing development is going to bring down property prices or rents.
“How can continually building on green spaces help the pledge to make the city carbon neutral by 2030, when this adds to existing carbon emissions? We urge councillors to show a commitment by removing all green spaces from the Local Plan, including the proposed development at Longmoor.”
One issue Bristol faces is pressure from the government to build thousands of new homes each year. Recently the government scrapped plans for mandatory housing targets, which would have seen cities forced to find and allocate a huge amount of land for development. But according to a senior Labour councillor, cities still face extra pressure on housing.
Labour Councillor Nicola Beech, cabinet member for strategic planning, said: “We must look upstream to central government policy which is at the heart of this challenge for the city. The flip-flop on government planning reform may, it appears, have taken its final flip in recent weeks. But that 35% uplift remains in government policy for the top cities in the UK.
“That’s what drives those challenging and difficult discussions that every member of the Local Plan working group has to front up to at most of our sessions. Please campaign with us on these flawed government policies on growth. Pushing homes into cities because they’re terrified of the home counties is no way to run this country’s growth trajectory.”
Just a few days are left on the current public consultation on Bristol’s new Local Plan. However, the process to replace a Local Plan takes a long time, and the new document won’t be signed off until next year. A senior Tory councillor said that Bristol needed to consider building on “less ecologically important” green spaces to meet housing demand.
Conservative Cllr Richard Eddy, chair of development control A committee, said: “The revised draft Local Plan is currently out for consultation and I urge Bristolians to respond to this by the deadline of January 20.
“Before Christmas, the government announced the end of centralised mandatory housing targets, the cessation of damaging land-banking, and new powers for local authorities to prioritise brownfield development over green space development.
“It’s important that the council and the people we serve realise that Bristol is a tight, urban authority, and may be forced to look at meeting our crying housing need by considering less ecologically important green spaces. To do otherwise would be craven and dishonest.”
