Severnside is an area full of contradictions. Villages abutting industrial estates and mega-warehouses, while busy motorways overlook quiet coastal neighbourhoods. It sits on the periphery of Bristol and South Gloucestershire but is better connected to Wales. It is both ideally situated and, in some ways, cut off simultaneously.
Encompassing neighbourhoods across Severn Beach, Redwick, Pilning, Hallen, Over and Easter Compton, as well as large parts of the Avonmouth and Severnside Enterprise Area (ASEA), the geographical scope of the region known as Severnside and its diversity also makes it difficult to define.
Following a six-week public engagement, a 30-year plan for the Severnside region in South Gloucestershire was recently approved by the council’s cabinet, putting forth a long-term vision for the area known as “place-shaping”. But the prospect of shaping a place as broad and disparate as Severnside with distinct communities that need to stay interconnected to be self-sustaining is not without its challenges.
