Mayor blames years of Government cuts for delays in city’s planning process

BrISToL’S economy is being badly affected because the planning department at City Hall has ‘effectively ground to halt’, businesses and residents have been warned.

Businesses, charities and residents are complaining of experiencing at least four months of backlogs to even be assigned a planning officer at Bristol City Council.

The Mayor of Bristol has said the delays are due to the unseen consequences of more than a decade of Government cuts to local authority finances.

one well-known Bristol charity warned earlier this month that it would start losing £5,000 a month on a new shop that it was unable to open because a planning application for a new shopfront was still sitting in the in-tray at City Hall.

And it was only when the charity’s boss appealed directly to the Mayor to intervene in the matter that the planning permission was awarded the very same day.

Across the city, big developers, small businesses and ordinary residents are experiencing at least four months of delays in seeing their planning applications even begin the process of being decided.

The Mayor of Bristol has blamed 12 years of Whitehall cuts to local government budgets. He has also pointed to a long-standing suppression of the fees which people have to pay to submit an application – which in theory is supposed to pay for the running of the planning department.

A number of high-profile applications have already experienced lengthy delays, and some developers are giving up on waiting and are taking their applications to the Government planning inspector to appeal on the grounds of ‘non-determination’ – arguing that the council has failed to make a decision within the legal time limit.

the general challenges in the construction market, our estimated opening is now late 2025 to early 2026.

“YTL is totally committed to opening Bristol’s first major indoor music arena and entertainment complex. We have been improving our design and have created the opportunity to increase the maximum capacity of the arena from 17,000 to 19,000, with over 2,000 premium seats.

“We will have the region’s largest column-less exhibition and convention halls with 6,000 sq m of floor area, height clearance of 21 metres and banqueting capacity for 4,000 people, together with a flexible hub for entertainment, film, TV and music rehearsals,” he said.

“As both owner and operator of YTL Arena Bristol, our ambition has always been to create a vibrant and unique mix of bars and lounges in our design which showcase the very best of Bristol. That is why we have been working with Bristolbased interior designers Studio B.”

Studio B is a Clifton-based design agency that won the job to design the arena and the spaces around it. Its founder, Kyle Clarke, said winning the contract was the “highlight of our year”.

“Since we received the instruction, we’ve been completely consumed with designing selected spaces within the arena to completely blow the customer experience through the roof,” he said.

“There isn’t another arena in the country that will come close. Huge hats off to the YTL Arena team for working with our relatively small, young, ambitious Bristol studio.”

Last month, the council’s largest emergency accommodation provider, Connolly & Callaghan (C&C) said after six months, it had given up waiting to have a planning officer assigned in order to start processing its application to turn a former nursing home in Bedminster into housing for up to 20 people.

As a result, C&C said that it was instead appealing to the Government to step in and decide instead.

In south Bristol, a firm of builders wanting to restore, refurbish and reopen a local pub, the Cross Hands, waited six months before finally being awarded planning permission, a delay which then badly affected their ability to get the project started.

And Ashton Gate’s Sporting Quarter plans were at City Hall for 18 months before it was finally given approval – setting the project back a couple of years, and impacting on the overall costs.