Access issues will make build the best free show in Bristol

WHAT ARE Bristol City planners paid to do? Just over three years ago they granted permission to a developer to build six apartments, over two storeys, on the flat roof at the rear of the gym that has its frontage on Shirehampton High Street.

The build to be effected from a narrow lane/private road that leaves Pembroke Road in Shirehampton and almost immediately has a sharp right-angled turn to run along to the site at the end of the lane.

The lane has the rear land of shops that front the High Street to one side and the rear gardens of private residences on Pembroke Road on the other.

Now that, at last, preparations for the work have begun, the planners further required the developer to submit a build plan to them for approval. The plan submitted has elements originating in Fairyland!

Most shocking is the developer’s claim that materials will be supplied to the site by lorries of up to six-wheeler size which, after delivery, will execute a three-point turn and exit the lane frontwards onto Pembroke Road.

That this is impossible has already been demonstrated; a fourwheeled lorry arrived from a Portsmouth firm with a load of metal tubings to construct a safety barrier round the edge of the flat roof; it just could not negotiate the bend and had to set off on its three-hour return journey to Portsmouth with its load undelivered!

Yet, when I outlined the flaws and other inaccuracies in the build plan to the planning enforcement department they told me that they proposed to “take no further action”. And the planners have now approved the impossible build plan.

(Another vehicle, delivering portable toilets to the site, damaged the gate posts of the house on the right-angled corner.)

So, anyone who wants to see the best “free show” in Bristol is encouraged to come along to Shirehampton in the coming months to watch these vehicles attempt to access the site – let alone attempt, within the narrow confines of the land adjacent to the site and the narrow private lane, a “three-point turn”!

Bill Patten By email