PROTESTERS staged a demonstration against proposals for thousands of homes on the greenbelt in east Bristol.
The demo, organised by South Our Green Spaces South Gloucestershire (SOGS-SG), was held before council leaders approved the next stage of a 15-year blueprint for the future of the district, including where more than 22,000 homes could be built.
A group of about 50 people, bearing placards, marched in the rain to a South Gloucestershire Council cabinet meeting in Kingswood on July 15.
Residents urged councillors to rethink the strategy, which includes thousands of homes on green fields in Shortwood, Siston and Warmley.
Proposals for 22,241 homes to be built from 2025 to 2040 are contained in the latest version of South Gloucestershire’s Local Plan, which is now open for fresh public consultation, after which the document will be finalised, consulted on again and then sent to government planning inspectors.
The latest version adds 17 new sites, with a total of 1,751 homes, to the previous draft published last November.
These include 140 homes in the Green Belt at Frenchay Christmas tree farm between the M32 and Old Gloucester Road, 35 at Frenchay Forestry in Common Mead Lane, Frenchay and seven on a site at Pomphrey Hill, Mangotsfield.
They will be added to other potential development sites announced last year, including the “Taylor Wimpey field” between Cossham Street and Rodway Hill Road, another off Pomphrey Hill with potential space for 65 homes and two on the other side of the Avon Ring Road at Shortwood, which the council says could accommodate 1,430 homes.
A report to July’s cabinet meeting said the extra sites had been added to give the council a “buffer” in case some proposed developments did not go ahead.
It insisted that these still were not enough to meet any of Bristol’s unmet housing needs and that South Gloucestershire could not do anything to help its city neighbour, although the council had fulfilled its legal “duty to cooperate” with Bristol when drawing up the blueprint.
SOGS-SG member Martin Thomas told the cabinet: “Bristol’s housing need should be kept inside Bristol and it should be building up, not out into the countryside.”
The proposals for large-scale development near the ring road lacked imagination and were “the lazy way to provide new homes”, he said.
Thomas Garland said: “South Gloucestershire Council seem determined to press ahead with this hugely environmentally damaging Local Plan.”
He called on the council to reconsider its plan and return to a vision, first announced in 2002, to re-plant “large areas of the ancient Kingswood Forest” between Pucklechurch and Warmley.
Liz Brennan (Con, Frenchay & Downend) told the meeting: “SOGS members represent a lot of people in South Gloucestershire who are concerned about what the development plan will mean for their communities.”
Cllr Brennan said her group opposed the Local Plan, and their priority would be to protect the Green Belt.
Cabinet member for planning Chris Willmore (Lib Dem, Yate North) said: “In a worst-possible case, if all the sites the council was looking at were to be released, it would be a 2% loss to the current Green Belt, but we’re working to get it down as low as we possibly can.”
She said 20% of South Gloucestershire residents lived in insecure, unaffordable housing with no chance of getting on the property ladder and renting often required 70% of their income, with a one-bedroomed flat in Kingswood costing £1,000 and month and a room in a shared house £750.
Cllr Willmore said: “We’ve got to do something about that, and the only way we can do that is by producing higher numbers of social rent and affordable housing for local people.
“What we have to do as responsible leaders in our communities is find spaces where we think the least worst harm is done and find ways to mitigate the harm that is inevitable with new development.”
Council co-leader Ian Boulton (Lab, Staple Hill & Mangotsfield) said if the authority did not have a Local Plan, all green spaces in the district could be targeted by developers.
He said: “A Local Plan protects the green spaces because we’re not having to fight off those speculative developments.”
The latest public consultation will run until September 13.
Details can be found at www.southglos.gov.uk/newlocalplan.
Following feedback, the final version of the Local Plan will be prepared and consulted on again next January.
It is expected to be submitted next June for examination by a planning inspector, which is likely to take place in October of that year, with a view to adoption by April 2026.
By Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service