A group of Labour and Green councillors from South Bristol have come together to demand two new residents’ parking schemes.
The four councillors who represent the two wards of Bedminster and Southville said that the Mayor and council cabinet must act to end the parking misery for people living in BS3, after the council passed a budget allocating money to bring in new schemes.
The four councillors said there was ‘growing pressure’ on the streets of the Bedminster and Ashton Gate areas of the city, because of a variety of reasons that are increasing the parking headaches for residents.
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Cllrs Tony Dyer and Christine Townsend, (Green, Southville), Tessa Fitzjohn (Green, Bedminster) and Mark Bradshaw (Lab, Bedminster) have written a joint statement that they will submit to the meeting of Bristol City Council on Tuesday (March 15), demanding the council begins to introduce residents' parking zones (RPZs) in much of the rest of BS3.
The four said they welcomed the amendment to the budget, voted through by councillors and agreed by Mayor Marvin Rees, which allocated funding for new RPZs in the city, where they are wanted.
“There is growing pressure in our wards resulting from commuter parking and additional vehicles owned or used by people in new residential developments, sub-division of houses and visitors to Ashton Gate, now and, in greater numbers, if Ashton Gate is expanded further,” the councillors said.
“Public opinion in support of controlled parking in the area has shifted and as councillors, we have a responsibility to support our residents. Indeed, the administration appeared to recognise this pressure and local support during the May 2021 council and mayoral election when a pledge was made to bring forward resident’s parking measures in the area.
“Previously, we have commissioned independent research on local attitudes and specific highway safety concerns, such as emergency access. The Council has done some informal consultation but this has not progressed towards implementing a scheme,” they added.
The saga of RPZs in Southville, Bedminster and Ashton has been a long one - ever since the first scheme was introduced in the streets of Southville - north of North Street - back in 2015.
Since then, parking nightmares have grown for residents of the streets to the south of North Street, particularly between North Street and Ashton Gate Stadium. That's been added to by a series of developments which don't include as many on-site parking spaces as new homes.
The council came close but narrowly failed to get Bristol City to pay for a matchday residents parking scheme back in 2018, but residents of Ashton said their parking nightmares are seven days a week, not just when there are events at the stadium.
Local residents even came together to organise a huge consultation survey, which found that things were so bad, people were moving away from the area because they couldn’t park anywhere near their homes.
That eventually prompted the council to conduct its own survey back in 2020, which found huge support for the introduction of an RPZ - or perhaps the extension of the existing Southville one over the other side of North Street into Ashton - in those Victorian terraced streets just off North Street, where more than 80 per cent of residents wanted a parking scheme.
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With that evidence, the council said it would be conducting a review, but nothing happened, and then the issue of RPZs became an election issue in May 2021. Just before the vote, Labour’s candidates in Southville and Ashton Gate said they had secured a pledge to bring in an RPZ there, but neither of them won, and since then still nothing has happened.
But now, with the boost of the council approving money for extensions or new RPZs around Bristol, the councillors of BS3 are demanding they are first in the queue.
“We now need to have clarity about the steps, evidence and timeframe required to move forward to complete the Southville RPS area (as it borders Bedminster Ward) and introduce a new Bedminster (West) RPS,” said the four councillors.
“We need to make a start on the initial shaping of this work leading to formal consultation and implementation. We now need officers to meet with us to agree what is required to address the problems faced by our residents and move forward with proposals to improve our local environment,” they added.
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