Bristol city councillors will vote on Labour mayor Marvin Rees’s annual budget on Tuesday afternoon (February 21). A meeting of full council at City Hall will decide the fate of proposed cuts and savings totalling £16.2million in the 12 months from April to balance the authority’s books, including a big increase in garden waste subscription fees, new pay-and-display parking and a 4.99 per cent council tax rise.
Each year the opposition groups suggest their own changes to the budget, called amendments, which will also be voted on in turn. Like the overall revenue spending plans for day-to-day services, which run up to £483.5million for 2023/24, any investments in schemes or the scrapping of new or increased charges have to pay themselves by taking funding from elsewhere in the council’s coffers.
The Greens, Conservatives, Lib Dems and Knowle Community Party have each set out what they would do with your money. Here are the suggestions from the Greens.
Read more: 'Liveable neighbourhood' proposed for South Bristol to reduce rat runs
The largest group on the council following the recent Hotwells & Harbourside by-election victory have proposed two amendments, which they say will reduce pressures caused by the city’s growth and make neighbourhoods better places to live. One, by Southville ward Cllr Tony Dyer, would develop plans for a liveable neighbourhood in South Bristol.
The other, by Redland ward Cllr Martin Fodor, would take £4million of unallocated developer contributions called CIL money, held in reserve, and spend it over four years upgrading local streets and parks in a bid to make them fit for the future. Cllr Fodor said: “This amendment uses funds that have been sitting unspent and unallocated for years, to invest in helping neighbourhoods cope with the extra demands, people and vehicles.
“For too long there's been a shortage of investment in local neighbourhoods around Bristol which are under pressure from development, while the Labour administration has continued to accumulate the bulk of these funds in a large centrally held pot. The impact of development is unequal and this funding can help Bristol’s communities cope with the pressures of growth.
“In our parks this could be used to make them more accessible, add play equipment, drinking fountains, toilets or facilities for traders, or improve and maintain paths as they get busier. Investments in local streets would help make them safer and reduce the impact of more traffic, improving wellbeing by funding improvements like crossings, safe cycle storage, and planting new trees to provide shade and flood relief.”
The £1million a year would be split equally between two strategic capital funds – one for parks and green spaces and the other on transport improvements. The budget papers to Tuesday’s meeting said the parks element of the plan included initiatives developed by local parks groups or recommended by the council’s parks team amid rising numbers of visitors to green spaces.
A finance officer’s assessment in the report said: “This will support the required investment into the parks infrastructure, which will improve the offer, accessibility and address long-term investment requirements.” The amendment said the transport investment aimed to deal with increasing traffic and rat-running on local roads, with the money used on working up projects with communities and implementing changes to roads, such as prioritising walking, cycling and disabled access.
The officer said this could also include the development of community transport measures by bringing in more staff in “under-resourced” council teams. An equalities assessment indicated a positive impact for groups such as disabled or older people and parents with pushchairs.
But the officer said there was a risk that taking £4million – more than a third – from the central strategic pot of CIL “may result in insufficient funding to deliver the physical infrastructure required” to support thousands of new homes being built in designated areas of growth and regeneration. Meanwhile, Cllr Dyer wants to use £800,000 from a £10million grant to the council from the West of England Combined Authority (Weca) to develop Bristol’s second “liveable neighbourhood”, with BS3 following in the footsteps of the city’s only existing one in East Bristol.
This would then be delivered using funding from local developer contributions and other transport-related funds. Cllr Dyer said: “In January 2022 Weca allocated £10million to Bristol for two liveable neighbourhoods.
“However the Labour administration has only brought forward plans for one, and used most of the remaining money for relatively low-level street changes instead. This amendment would use remaining funds – money not allocated to anything else – to help develop a liveable neighbourhood as originally intended in South Bristol, in the BS3 area, also sometimes called Greater Bedminster.”
He said this part of Bristol would see some of the highest levels of development anywhere in the city over the next 10 to 20 years, and street space and parking were already limited. The project would support walking and cycling by reducing residential roads being used by commuter traffic without imposing restrictions on where local people can go.
“By developing a liveable neighbourhood in South Bristol as originally planned, we can deliver streets that are safe, accessible and pleasant places to be, boost the local economy and improve people’s health and quality of life, reducing air pollution and traffic incidents,” Cllr Dyer said. The officer assessment said the proposal would “provide a ‘shovel ready’ option to take forward” but that funding was not currently specifically identified to deliver it, although this could become available.
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