HorseWorld fails to convince

HorseWorld's bid to build 125 houses - and a very big visitor centre - on green belt land at Whitchurch village was roundly rejected by BaNES development Control Committee today.

The ailing charity had claimed that it must have the revenue from selling off its current visitor centre for housing if it was to survive. It's Big Idea was to use the development cash to build a bigger better visitor centre. With similar amenities as the old centre, but a bigger shop and and a bigger cafe and (wait for it) a new 250-seater Indoor Arena, it could up the visitor numbers by a third, and get them to stay longer, while paying more per admission, and spending more in the shop and in the cafe. Problem solved.

The BaNES councillors weren't persuaded. The business plan didn't convince them. They didn't like being told that only 10% of the houses could be 'affordable'. The traffic figures suggested much more congestion in an already congested area. The schools didn't have the capacity. An hourly bus diverted to pass the site (except evenings and Sundays) wouldn't make anyone abandon their cars. And the new visitor centre would be a blot on the landscape. All in all, there were no 'very special circumstances' that might make it ok to permanently build over the Green Belt.

The scheme's not dead though. BaNES themselves are looking at releasing local Green Belt for development to meet their housing targets. A proposal's just been floated to release a chunk of HorseWorld land and neighbouring fields for 200 homes. If that's agreed in the Core Strategy, HorseWorld will be back. And if BaNES nominate other space for new homes, the developers will be queueing.

Hoofnote: 1st Dec.

A curious feature of HorseWorld's application to build 125 houses on the greenbelt with a minimum of 'affordable' dwellings among them was the announcement to the BaNES planning committee that Bristol had withdrawn its objection.

Not so. It's true that Bristol's LibDem leader Tim Kent had been lobbied beforehand by HorseWorld chief Mark Owen, who told him that without the planning permission the ailing charity would go belly up. And it's true that Tim, in turn, had lobbied the other south Bristol councilors asking for their support in getting the Bristol objection withdrawn. And it's true that Bristol did put in a surprise 11^th hour 'comment' to BaNES about the application.

But it didn't withdraw the objection. The secretive attempt by Tim (and any henchpersons who might have been equally worried that they might be portrayed as 'cruel to horses') to overturn the case made by their own officers didn't withdraw anything, even though the BaNES officers tried to make it look that way.

A Little Bit Faster. A Whole Lot Worse

Mayor George is busy creating, not to mention advertising,  a thousand 'Calmer Crescents' with the roll-out of 20mph limits on the city's residential streets.

But not in King Georges Road.

 

That doesn't get the mayoral treatment, it gets an appropriately royal going over from the West of England Partnership, egged on by the motoring and business lobbies. The Madness of King Georges Road .

Today it provides a path for around 500 vehicles a day – and it rarely, if ever, sees a juggernaut. But as soon as the South Bristol Link opens, everything changes – ten thousand 'car equivalents' will pass these front doors each day.

 

Perhaps a few will come from local businesses, rerouted from current journeys down Hartcliffe Way or along Airport Road. But by far the majority will be the traffic that already flows – or inches from standstill to standstill - along Airport Road, heading for the A38 or for the Cumberland Basin and the M5 at Avonmouth.

  

   

They'll save a few seconds too – unless the road is a victim of its own 'success' and attracts enough new traffic to cancel out even that small benefit for the driving public. As tends to happen in real life.

A little bit faster?   A Whole Lot Worse

[The Planning Application for the South Bristol section of the Link is expected to be held on Wednesday27th November at City Hall (6pm).   More on the 'NO to the South Bristol Link Road' pages]

Controversy at the other football ground

The planning decision had been clear, very popular, and democratically arrived at by the elected members. Twice. But some time later, the unsuccessful party, driven by self interest, chose to go against the will of the majority and challenge the planners to get the decision overturned.

To deal with this dissident minority, the council has to assemble a legal team at great expense, headed by a barrister and drawing on evidence from 'expert' professional witnesses. Likewise, the self-interest group get themselves a QC plus a team of advisers. A venue is hired for the hearing, which will be in public. There's plenty to be said: this will take at least four full days, maybe more.

But the Bristol Post (in whose distribution area all this controversy is happening) ignores it. No headlines about 'spitting in the face of democracy' or 'holding Bristol to ransom'. There's no orchestrated vilification of anyone. This time, it has nothing to do with Sainsburys and only a very tenuous link with Rovers

Yesterday was the first day of the appeal into BaNES' rejection of a bid to build over the green belt between Stockwood and Whitchurch village, and it was held at the Bath City ground, Twerton Park, before a Planning Inspector, Mike Robbins. He'll eventually report his findings to that localisation hero and champion of the Green Belt, Eric Pickles. Expect a final decision sometime in the spring.

At some stage in the hearings, the Inspector will be doing a site visit. He'll find it's been prepared for him... the usual rough grazing and wildlife-rich hedgerows have been harshly cut back in anticipation, so that it looks less like real countryside

The first day saw introductions and explanations, opening statements from the two sides, and an examination of the landscape impacts of the proposed development. It was notable mostly for what his website describes as “the pure theatre of his cross-examination “ performed by the appellants' Anthony Crean QC – a silk who's evidently in high demand, and usually from the rich bad guys. It was uncomfortable theatre, too – he could switch between bullying, patronising, warmth and anger almost within a single sentence, in his efforts to confuse and break down his witness. Not nice.

The hearings will run from 10 till 5 or later for the rest of the week, and maybe stretch into next week.   They won't be looking at the scheme for 295 houses that originally got turned down by BaNES - this is about a revised 'concept plan' with a 'mere' 200 homes, which the developers have introduced since.   It goes straight into the appeal/Pickles stage without first having being tested by local councillors.  

Lunchbreak nostalgia.... Stockwood Pete's first visit to Twerton Park since 1952 (when Southend United lost 3-1 to City in the cup)

[Meanwhile, Horseworld's application to build a new estate and visitor centre has been delayed while BaNES sorts out its housing allocations for the area.  The Bristolian has plenty to say about that one] 

Swings and Roundabouts

Whittock Road green space yesterday. By Christmas there should be a childrens playground here.

About time too. Apparently there used to be, in the wooded area far left, which is part of the Open Space Local Nature Reserve, an Adventure Playground. Very popular it was, by all accounts, with local youngsters and their parents. It even had staff - and a phone line. But that was a long time ago, when Stockwood was still young.

Five years ago, when the council launched its Parks and Green Spaces Strategy, this was one of the sites that a local group of residents wanted to prioritise for a playground. We'd toured exemplar sites round the city, held workshops and dicussions, and finally came up with a string of positive suggestions that somehow didn't materialise.

Three years later, out of the blue, the Cabinet decided it could afford a £3.5 million spend on the parks. No public consultation on this one, though – councillors were invited to suggest what was wanted in their wards. The Stockwood councillors' bid - probably on the back of an envelope - was for:

• The Whittock Road play area
• Some signs, bins and access barriers at Holsom Road
• Benches or seats on the Showering Road hill path
• More rails and paths at the Coots Meadow.
• [South Bristol Sports Club wanted half a million, too. Dunno what that was for... to extend the car park, maybe?]

Stockwood got the first of these, the playground – which ticks all the right boxes and, at £100K, looks like a fair share of the £3.5 million split between 35 wards. This will fill a real gap in access to play for younger children in this part of Stockwood. 

I don't know who got Hengrove's share, though. Their councillors didn't even put in a bid.

Every Little Helps

Keeping Money in the City: a local levy on giant supermarkets

“a classic example of trendy politics colliding with reality “ according to Gary Hopkins, but his Evening Post comment was more like a classic case of party point-scoring colliding with reality.  Maybe he feels his role in the LibDem group is being challenged

Gary was dismissing the proposal brought to last Tuesday's council by the Green group – and, on the day, roundly rejected by the other parties .

Had the other councillors accepted it, and if broad support could be shown from other councils and civic groups across the country, it would have strengthened the chances of a request to government to let councils (if they think fit) impose an 8.5% levy on the business rates payable by certain large retailers on their patch – particularly supermarkets. Government could not reject the suggestion out of hand – it must first negotiate with the Local Government Association. All being well, it would ultimately lead to the law makers allowing councils this limited discretion to raise money for public use from some of the most destructive of retailers.

Complicated, that. Clearly too complicated for Gary's LibDems, for Labour, and, of course, for the Tories. Too complicated for the council officers charged with providing an objective report to the council. And far too complicated for the Bristol Post.

Together, they rewrote the story. It became, in their view, a proposal that Bristol should now impose an 8.5% levy on all its big shops. That would send out a message that Bristol is unfriendly to business. It would induce all such shops to abandon their lucrative trade in Bristol. The poor would be then unable to buy cheap food. Even if the shops remained, the poor would pick up the tab at the tills.

Only one small part of this gross distortion did have a rationale of sorts. The council cannot at present distinguish between the 'comparison' retailers like B&Q or Harvey Nichols (not that the poor would find they'd lost much there) and the prime target, the huge and profitable food supermarket businesses.

But anyone who'd looked at the real proposal (and 'Local Works', which had prompted it) would know that legislation would be needed. That's where a distinction between the business types could be written in. It was a non-objection. And the rest was pure invention.

Fortunately, not all councils, or parties, are as blinkered as Bristol's. In Gloucester and in Torbay, it's been the LibDems who are making the running (Gary please note). In Leeds, with an overwhelming Labour majority, a similar proposal was passed with cross-party support. In Liverpool, though, it was Labour who took the supermarkets' side and killed it off

Of course, there's no reason to think that the ill-informed debate at Tuesday's meeting, with councillors voting en bloc along with their parties, reflects public opinion. It doesn't even establish council policy. It's still within the mayor's powers to sound out real public opinion, and if he can show that people would like the option of a levy, he can join other councils in seeking powers from government. That's how the Sustainable Communities Act works – by encouraging initiatives from the grass roots, to complement the usual centralist 'top-down' legislative structures.

But how to show George that Bristolians think councils should be given this power?

Writing to Mayor Ferguson is one option – you can draw on the information on the Local Works pages.

The quickest way, though, is to sign up to Charlie Bolton's petition on the council website.

Artful Dodgers - how to bypass the local planning system.

No, this isn't about the Mem or Sainsburys. Strictly speaking, it's not even about Bristol, because the site is just 'over the border' in BaNES.

It's the three fields that lie between Stockwood and Whitchurch village. Normally used for grazing ponies, and criss-crossed by footpaths, the fields were bought a few years back by Robert Hitchins Ltd, a Cheltenham based developer specialising in commercial business parks.

Hitchins' ambitions for the three fields are a bit different, though. Up to 295 houses, pretty much filling up the remaining Green Belt open space between the two settlements. No shops, no schools, no health centre, no....... anything, really. Just an estate.

Twice they've put in planning applications to Bath and North East Somerset's development control committee. Twice, they've been unequivocally turned down, because their proposals break most of the rules in the planning book.

Now they're trying a new approach. They're appealing to the Planning Inspectorate against the most recent refusal, in the hope that Mr Pickles will override the considered views of local residents and councillors. But at the same time they're introducing a slightly scaled-down alternative version of the original proposal – with 200 houses instead of 295.

We have the opportunity to comment on this 'reduced' scheme – or at least, on the summary diagram that seems to provide the sole documentary foundation for it

But this version will skip the local scrutiny that was enough to see off the original plan. Instead, it will be for the government Planning Inspector to look at the evidence and make a recommendation to the boss – Eric Pickles, Localisation Hero.

Smart, eh?

The Planning Enquiry is expected next month. Deadline for comments is 15^th September.

[added 19th Sept]   The public inquiry is scheduled for 22nd October, 10am, at the Bath City F.C. ground, Twerton Park BA2 1DB

Shop Ping at Stockwood

It arrived this morning!  Thanks, April R, for getting us one of the surplus 'Ping' tables up at the shops.   First to use it - StockwoodPete and BarberTom.   For the time being, bats will be available from the barbers or Steve's shop next door, or at the Library.