Out and about in Brislington

Another round-up of local news from your hardworking Lib Dem team:

Victory at Wyevale

We are delighted to report the great news regarding the application for tree felling at the site of the former Wyevale Garden Centre. Following a huge number of objections from the public, much larger than usual, the application was withdrawn last week. This proves that when we work together, we can make an impact. However, considering the developer’s track record, we still need to be vigilant as to what is going on at this site. With this in mind, we will be having a meeting with the land agent for the owners of Wyevale and the Bristol City Council tree officer as soon as we can. Furthermore, the BCC enforcement team is now involved with the owners around all their previous breaches of planning regulations at Wyevale.

Yellow Railings Consultation Results

Our consultation on the sudden appearance of bright yellow railings on West Town Lane has now finished. Following discussions with local residents and council officers a couple of weeks ago, we were able to halt all work on site until the opinions of residents had been sought, something BCC had neglected to do. We delivered letters to local residents asking for their views. The results are as follows:

• Leave the hoops in place. (11%) • Remove the hoops and reinstate the grass as before. (44%) • Replace the hoops with less visually-intrusive concrete or wooden posts. (22%) • Tarmac the area and turn it into a car park. (22%) We are delighted there is a clear majority (78%) in favour of keeping the green space. We have now forwarded these responses to BCC so that hopefully, we can get a scheme which the majority of local residents want rather than one that has been imposed without consultation.

12-Day Litter Pick Challenge

We have now completed our 12-Day Litter Pick Challenge, covering over 30 different streets right across Brislington West and collecting in excess of 35 bags of litter! Of course, the need for litter picking never stops and we will be organising our regular community litter picking action days just as soon as we can. Once again, thank you to everyone who stopped to give us words of encouragement and to everyone who told us how they have been inspired to do the same. #keepbrislingtonbeautiful Blocked Drains Everywhere!

Both of us live in Brislington and that means we regularly spot issues that need dealing with. During our 12-Day Litter Pick Challenge, we were shocked to see the huge number of blocked drains across the ward. Almost every drain on Kensington Park Road was completely blocked with mud, gravel and litter. These have now been reported and will hopefully be cleared soon. If you notice a blocked drain, please send us the exact location and we can report it for you.

eScooter Update

Trees, Trees, Trees!

At Full Council this month Andrew asked the Mayor the following question about the eScooter scheme in Bristol:

“We recently saw the launch of the eScooter trial for Bristol. It’s been billed as a low-carbon alternative form of transport to get around Bristol. Unfortunately, you can only use them in the city centre so they are unlikely to encourage the vast majority of Bristolians to change their travelling habits. To really make a difference, they need to be available at our park and ride sites and other key suburban locations so that people have a real choice in how they travel. Would the Mayor be able to investigate the possibility of extending the coverage of the scheme and report back on his findings because as it stands, it’s a missed opportunity and the eScooters are likely to end up as nothing more than a novelty for tourists?”

Unfortunately, the Mayor was unable to say when the scheme would be coming to Brislington. However, there are plans for a huge expansion in the north of the city. Once again, our part of Bristol is being left behind. We will keep pushing to make sure Brislington is included in future expansions.

Motorway Traffic in Brislington

Andrew’s second question to the Mayor was about signage on the Callington Road: “The Mayor may be aware that road signs on Callington Road currently advise drivers heading for the M4 motorway to travel into the city along the A4 through the densely-populated suburb of Brislington West, where congestion and pollution is already a serious issue. I’m sure the Mayor would agree with me that it would be more sensible to encourage this motorway-bound traffic to he ad out of the city and onto the ring road instead. That is after all, the purpose of ring roads. Could the Mayor say when the road signs will be changed?”

Although the Mayor was unable to say when the signs would be changed, he appeared to agree that this was an issue that needed looking at. Removing motorway-bound traffic from the Village and the A4 could help to reduce congestion and pollution in the area. We recently had a meeting with the head of the Tree Bristol Team who is responsible for new tree planting following the work of the Environment Agency in Nightingale Valley. Most of the replacement trees, around 32, will be in the valley. However, there is funding for 20 street trees across Greater Brislington to replace trees that have been lost. 12 sites have already been identified and we suggested several other sites for some of the remaining 8 trees. These will now be inspected to check for suitability. We’ll keep you posted.

Driving Test Centre Relocating

The Bristol Driving Test Centre at Flowers Hill will be closing on 19 February. The DTC will then move to a temporary site at Jubilee House on Croydon Street, opening on 3 March. The Department for Work and Pensions will also be vacating the Flowers Hill site by the end of March. As we reported here previously, the site has been earmarked for new housing. However, it’s unlikely any work on the new development will start for at least a year. You can keep abreast of the latest news by following the Flowers Hill Housing Development Facebook Group we set up last year. https://www.facebook.com/groups/48768 9002398624/?ref=share

Keeping in Touch

We believe in keeping residents up to date on important local issues and publish a quarterly newsletters, ‘Focus on Brislington West’ but unfortunately, we are currently unable to deliver a paper version due to new government guidelines during the pandemic. However, we have a digital version of our newsletter and if you would like to receive it, please register using this link: http://www.bristollibdems.org/efocus. You can also see back copies of our newsletters and complete our online surveys on our website: https://www. bristollibdems.org/brislington_west.

Best wishes,

Jos Clark, Liberal Democrat Councillor (Brislington West) Email: cllr.jos.clark@bristol.gov. uk Mobile: 07584 370429

Sure, everyone expected the first weeks of Brexit to be a fiasco. What isn’t these days? But I don’t think anyone expected the initial victims to be fishermen (after all the commotion about fish!), Percy Pig and musicians. The disaster around food supply chains is a fairly predictable consequence of a government that always prioritises messages over detail. Signing a deal on Christmas Eve and implementing it on New Year’s Day was always a terrible idea (remember that the EU offered them a 2-year transition period), and inevitable led to key issues being forgotten or miscommunicated. The fact that M&S cannot send its sweets (which are produced in Germany) to its own stores in the Republic of Ireland without paying VAT twice is a ridiculous but inevitable consequence of spending 30 years building up integrated supply chains and then trying to unwind them over a holiday weekend.

This has practical consequences for all of us – in December you could spot a bargain from a company in any EU country and see it arrive in a few days. Now you might face a Customs bill of tens or even hundreds of pounds. For nothing.

It is tragic that decent working people will lose their jobs, and work will move overseas, due to a failure clearly to set out what needed to happen, and to allow people to prepare. It is obviously possible to move to less integrated supply chains, even if the new Customs Declarations, are an expensive administrative burden that no-one wants – but the economic recession that this causes is as much cockup anything else. Supply markets will adapt. The failure to allow musicians to perform (without an expensive work permit) says something deeper. This was planned The government was offered a deal on mobility that includes 90 days of visa-free travel, including short-term work. They turned it down – in favour of 90 days of visa-free travel for leisure but not work. Very lovely for Boris Johnson’s dad but utterly useless for most of us. Tragic for those people, such as touring musicians, who want to visit a number of cities and countries for short periods. This means sacrificing a successful British industry for pure ideological reasons. It betrays a basic dislike of foreigners and of British people who want to spend some time abroad.

This is the same government that has withdrawn from the Erasmus student exchange programme and presided over continual cuts to teaching languages in schools, as schools have to cope with increasing pressure to do ‘more with less’ by combining ever greater focus on exam results with inadequate investment. It’s not just formal education that is under pressure, but the softer links between schools and cities – an area where Bristol has a grand tradition, with some of the UK’s oldest twinning relationships with Bordeaux and Hannover becoming harder to sustain. No-one gains from stopping young people studying or British musicians performing. Central Government should recognise this and negotiate a more sensible solution – now, not in 2024.

Rob Logan Labour Candidate for Brislington West