Progress has been made on how one of Bristol’s largest green spaces is run after heavy criticism over a lack of transparency. Following a landmark survey last year, a series of reforms were brought in to overhaul the running of Clifton Down and Durdham Down.
Clifton Down is owned by the Society of Merchant Venturers and Durdham Down is owned by Bristol City Council. Together the Downs are run by a committee made up of councillors and members of the Merchant Venturers, which has faced several major issues recently.
The outgoing chair of the committee, Green Councillor Paula O’Rourke, said she had accomplished the four goals she set out to do last year. She was previously Lord Mayor of the council, a role which usually lasts one year and includes chairing the Downs committee.
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Speaking at a Downs committee meeting, she said: “I’ve always said that the weakest link of the Downs committee is the Lord Mayor. I feel even more strongly that that’s true having been in the role for a year. It’s a very difficult role. The Lord Mayor is very busy doing a lot of other things and there isn’t a huge amount of resources to support the activities in between the meetings.
“In previous years when I was a member of the committee, very often it was business as usual. It’s very hard to get anything proactive done in between meetings. Somebody has to drive it, and unless you have a Lord Mayor who has got specific interests in this, it doesn’t necessarily follow that that’s going to happen.”
Cllr O’Rourke represents Clifton, one of the wards bordering the Downs. The previous Lord Mayor and committee chair was Conservative Cllr Steve Smith, who represents Westbury-on-Trym and Henleaze, also bordering the Downs. The new Lord Mayor is Labour Cllr Paul Goggin, representing Hartcliffe and Withywood in the south of Bristol.
Controversies on the Downs include previous plans to use part of the parkland as overspill car parking for the Bristol Zoo, which has since closed. This saw campaigners Downs for People take the committee to court, ramping up steep legal fees.
This issue also prompted questions about why the Merchant Venturers were at all involved in running the Downs, whereas most parks in Bristol are managed solely by the council. A landmark survey launched in spring last year asked the public about how the Downs should be governed, including whether the Merchants should remain involved.
Now reforms enacted include setting up an advisory panel with the volunteer group Friends of the Downs and Avon Gorge; improving communications with the public; and hiring a fundraising manager to get external grants and cash to pay for the parkland’s upkeep. This is despite obstacles, according to Cllr O’Rourke, such as a new chief executive of the council and the death of the Queen — which meant the committee had to postpone one meeting.
Cllr O’Rourke said: “Because I had been on the committee before, and I was following in the footsteps of some really strong people both on the Merchants side and on the councillors side, I was able to actually have very clear targets for myself this year for what the committee could achieve. I came in with four things that we really wanted to do.
“We needed to get an agreement on the new governance arrangements. We needed to get a strong ally, which we did with FoDAG. We’ve set up the advisory panel so that we’re reaching out to the broader community and we have a very strong conduit for communication into and out of this committee. And we needed to get ourselves in a position where we could recruit a Downs manager.
“I’m very pleased that we’ve achieved all those four things. It takes a lot of stuff going on in the background. We’ve got to have agreement by the council, agreement by the Merchants; we’ve had a changeover of chief executive; and we’ve had the Queen die, which ruined one of our meetings.”
