The Government’s housing agency has formally submitted plans for 260 new homes on land the Mayor of Bristol declared should never be built on.
And Homes England has put in the finalised plans for a big new housing estate on Brislington Meadows saying that, despite what the Mayor declared 20 days before last year’s election, it is still ‘Bristol City Council planning policy to build homes on this site’.
The formal planning application has not yet been published on the city council’s website, but Homes England’s scheme is the first formal opening in what is set to be a battle between the Government and City Hall over the area of land that formed a key part of last year’s local council and mayoral election.
April 2021: Green field site no longer earmarked for development, says mayor
Homes England and residents of Brislington are, as of today Wednesday April 13, waiting for the council’s planning department to validate and publish the plans.
The Government’s land agency said their application won’t finalise all the details of its plans to build 260 homes on the key ecological site in the south east of the city.
Homes England’s statement said: “Homes England has now submitted their outline planning application for new homes at Brislington Meadows. It normally takes about two weeks for the application to be validated (checked) by Bristol City Council's and published on their planning portal. We will update when it is.” Earlier last month, the Government housing body told residents that, after a consultation before Christmas, the plans were being finalised: “Following the recent consultation, the team have been finalising the planning application and are now looking to submit it within the next two weeks. We will update when it is,” they added.
“The application will be in outline, with only the access designed in detail. It will aim to establish high level development parameters such as movement corridors, land use, landscape and building heights. The detail, which includes design, will come forward through ‘reserved matters’ applications at a later date, subject to the approval of the outline application,” they added.
Homes England said they were still going ahead with the housing scheme, despite the Mayor’s announcement last April, that homes would not be built there.
“Bristol is a fantastic city and is widely regarded as a great place to live, but is facing the difficult challenge of balancing the urgent need for new homes against ecological and climate emergencies,” a Homes England spokesperson said. “We believe that can be achieved at Brislington Meadows, but we acknowledge that not everyone shares our view.”
In a ‘Why here?’ section on the Brislington Meadows website, Homes England’s first answer points out: “It is Bristol City Council planning policy to build homes on this site.”
Despite the mayor’s announcement, the site is still included in the current Local Plan as a site for housing, having been voted through by councillors back in 2014.
Since 2014, there has been a long-running campaign by residents of Brislington and Broomhill against the development on Brislington Meadows, because its untouched former farmland and green space has become a wildlife haven since the war, as development has surrounded it.
Homes England have scaled back their plans slightly since the Mayoral announcement in April last year. The Government body has dropped the number of new homes from 300 to 260, and say now that 55 per cent of the land there would still be ‘green space’, including ‘wet meadows with boardwalks retained trees and hedgerow corridors’.
Homes England own the land because they were persuaded by Bristol City Council chiefs and the Mayor Marvin Rees to spend almost £15 million of taxpayers’ money buying it. Most of the land was owned by a London-based property development company, the rest by the city council, and an access strip on Bonneville Road by local businessman Johnny Palmer.
Since 2016, the city council tried to press ahead with house-building on Brislington Meadows, but couldn’t reach an agreement with the London-based property company to develop the land for new homes. So council chiefs persuaded Homes England to step in and buy everyone out, so new homes could be built there.
But with Avon Wildlife Trust backing the local residents’ campaign to stop development there, and the Meadows becoming a hot election issue in Brislington, just 20 days before the city council and Mayoral election, Mayor Marvin Rees and the two local Labour candidates in the election announced the U-turn that the land would not be built on.
However, faced with the realisation that Homes England still wanted to build there, it wasn’t in the power of the Mayor to stop development outright just by saying it, and with Brislington Meadows still in the Bristol Local Plan, one of those councillors, Tim Rippington, slammed the mayor for misleading them - after both Labour candidates were elected.
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