Housing Mayor urged to save city’s green spaces
AN opposition councillor is calling on Bristol’s mayor to save the city’s green spaces from being obliterated by new housing.
Richard Eddy, a Conservative, wants Labour’s Marvin Rees to give a “cast iron” commitment that Bristol’s green belt, parks and farmland will be preserved.
The proposal, which city councillors will vote on next week, comes with the city’s last working farm, Yew Tree Farm, still under threat from a developer’s plans to build 200 homes there.
It also follows the Labour administration reversing plans to build homes on Brislington Meadows and a commitment by Mr Rees that he will “look again” at whether to redevelop the Western Slopes, an important wildlife corridor in south Bristol.
Cllr Eddy said the city council ought to be building housing on brownfield sites – those previously developed – before using the green belt or other green spaces.
“No one denies that a city such as Bristol needs appropriate new residential development for its population to be housed,” the Bishopsworth representative said. “Unfortunately, I am far from convinced that the current Labour mayoral administration has achieved sufficient progress in regenerating under-used brownfield sites. The council ought to be prioritising brownfield re-use before considering destroying our precious green belt and ‘green lung’ open spaces.
“Unless the mayor signals a radical change, unique environmental assets such as Yew Tree Farm … and the beautiful Western Slopes could disappear forever under the bulldozer.”
Yew Tree Farm is a small family enterprise in south Bristol that produces a range of organic pork, beef, eggs, fruit, vegetables, seasonal jams and chutneys. It added honey to its produce list last week.
Farmer Catherine Withers, whose family owns 28 acres outright at Bristol’s last self-sufficient farm and rents 15 acres adjoining it, has been warning that the farm’s future is under threat because the city council has plans to allow homes to be built there.
The council’s emerging Local Plan is set to strip green belt status from the 15 acres Catherine rents close to Bridgwater Road, and developer Redrow Homes already has plans to build 200 homes there. It submitted another pre-application planning inquiry to the city council this month for the homes.
Cllr Eddy’s ‘golden motion’ is set to be debated at a full council meeting on Tuesday. It says green spaces such as Yew Tree Farm are just as important as Brislington Meadows and the Western Slopes, a green space between Knowle West and Hartcliffe Way.
Mr Rees announced that no homes would be built on Brislington Meadows in April, less than a year after the land was sold to Homes England for up to 300 properties to be built there. The mayor said the change of heart, just before May’s elections, was due to the ecological emergency.
In August, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said Mr Rees and council chiefs would “take a renewed look” at whether hundreds of homes should be built on the Western Slopes, which is the subject of two plans for a potential total of almost 600 homes.
Cllr Eddy’s motion says: “The family [at Yew Tree Farm] has been recognised by the Avon Wildlife Trust and RSPB for the huge strides made in achieving sustainable, low-intensity, organic local food production, whilst maintaining abundant and attractive biodiversity.
“Considering the mayor’s pledges around combating food poverty and encouraging communities to grow more of their own food, council calls for a halt to the proposed redevelopment of or incursion into any remaining productive wildlife-rich agricultural land.
“Furthermore, the mayor is asked to give a cast-iron commitment that he will look instead to increase the emphasis placed in the authority’s site allocations and development management policies on reusing or repurposing existing and emerging brownfield, previously developed or urban centres rather than continuing to erode our surrounding fields and countryside.”
The mayor’s office did not respond to a request to comment.