More than 7,000 people are petitioning the city council to stop giving permission for new buildings on Bristol’s green spaces. Councillors will debate the petition at a full council meeting next week amid ongoing concern about green areas being lost to development.
Bristol City Council declared an “ecological emergency” three years ago, responding to escalating threats to local wildlife and ecosystems. But despite that declaration, petitioners say new developments “fly in the face” of the promises then made to protect green spaces.
Green spaces at threat from construction include the Western Slopes, Brislington Meadows and Ashton Vale. The petition, organised by Martyn Cordey, will be presented to a full council meeting on Tuesday, January 10, with the mayor Marvin Rees invited to respond to its calls.
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The petitioners said: “We the undersigned call upon Bristol City Council to halt any further development on green spaces in the city. It is an absolute travesty that we are seeing highly biodiverse and ecologically important urban green spaces potentially destroyed. This massacre of green spaces appears to be unrelenting and needs to be stopped, now.
“We do not deny that Bristol has a housing crisis, due to an increasing population and unregulated university expansion, but the solution is not to continually build on valuable green spaces. This petition is asking for better use of brownfield sites and redundant previously developed buildings and areas. Stop building on valuable green spaces.”
Over the past 50 years, according to the council, the world has lost 60% of wild invertebrates and up to 76% of insects. In Bristol, songbird populations like swifts and starlings have dropped by more than 96%. In 2021, the council set out an “ecological action plan”, with promises to take action and protect local wildlife habitats, such as reducing pesticide use.
Some recent progress has been made on protecting green spaces in Bristol, as the council draws up its new Local Plan. This housing plan no longer allocates space for housing development at two green spaces: Yew Tree Farm and Brislington Meadows. This makes it harder for developers to get permission to build new housing there.
But the new Local Plan might also allocate space for hundreds of new homes on two countryside sites on the outskirts of the city: off the Bath Road in Brislington and off Elsbert Drive in Bishopsworth. Controversial plans to build hundreds of houses on green space at Ashton Vale were also given planning permission in October, despite criticism from campaigners.
