Protest over plans for thousands of homes on greenbelt near Bristol

Placard-wielding protesters held a demonstration at a council meeting against plans for thousands of homes on the greenbelt near Bristol. It came as South Gloucestershire Council leaders approved the next stage of a 15-year blueprint for the future of the district, including where more than 22,000 new homes should be built.

A row broke out at the cabinet meeting on Monday, July 15, with opposition Conservatives accusing the Lib Dem/Labour administration of “patronising” and “demonising” campaigners fighting to protect vast swathes of the countryside from development. Authority leaders hit back, insisting they were not “destroying” the greenbelt and that there was no choice but to allocate a small proportion of the previously protected land for homes to tackle the housing crisis.

The 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 going out to eight weeks of public consultation, after which the document will be finalised, consulted on again and then sent to government planning inspectors for public examination. There are 17 new sites identified – of which nine are in the greenbelt – with a total of 1,751 homes compared to the previous draft published last November.

Read more:

A report to the meeting said the additional properties would give the council a “buffer” in case some of the developments did not go ahead but that these still were not enough to meet any of Bristol’s unmet housing needs and that it could not do anything to help its city council neighbour. It said that despite this, South Gloucestershire Council had a legal “duty to cooperate” with Bristol when preparing the Local Plan and that this had been fulfilled.

Try BristolLive Premium for FREE with no ads and new features

Campaign group Save Our Green Spaces (SOGS) South Gloucestershire member Martin Thomas told cabinet: “Bristol’s housing need should be kept inside Bristol and it should be building up, not out into the countryside. And yet South Gloucestershire’s strategic planners and its council appear willing to cooperate with Bristol in an act of institutional vandalism by proposing to build thousands of houses around Bristol on the greenbelt.

“What on earth do you think was the point of having the greenbelt in the first place? It was to protect the rural environment and prevent large urban encroachment into the countryside.

“Of the 20,490 new dwellings that you seek to build by 2040, 7,813 are proposed to be built on the greenbelt, and I gather you’ve bumped that up by another 10 per cent. Well, 110 per cent of nonsense is nonsense.

“More than 4,000 of those homes are designated to be on the Eastern Fringe. This proposal lacks imagination and it is the lazy way to provide new homes. The greenbelt is immensely important to our local communities.”

Cabinet member for planning, regeneration and infrastructure Cllr Chris Willmore (Lib Dem, Yate North) said: “This document we will be hopefully approving says ‘Therefore this council’s position is that it is not able to address Bristol City Council’s unmet need either wholly or in part’. I don’t see how much clearer the council can be in saying ‘No, we haven’t got room’.

“I know there are leaflets that have gone out to suggest that all the housing in the current draft emerging strategy are to do with Bristol’s unmet need but it isn’t. We have never said we would take it, we’ve said we would do our statutory duty in assessing that request, and here’s our answer, ‘Sorry, we can’t do anything to address Bristol’s unmet need’.

“In a worst possible case, if all the sites the council was looking at were to be released, it would be a two per cent loss to the current greenbelt, but we’re working to get it down as low as we possibly can. We are not destroying the greenbelt, we are selectively releasing a percentage of it, and it’s a percentage that is not dissimilar to what has been released in the past.”

She said 20 per cent of South Gloucestershire residents lived in insecure, unaffordable housing with no chance of getting on the property ladder and that renting often required 70 per cent of their monthly income. 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.

“There’s a real debate to be had about whether these are sites that should go into the final version but I hope we can have it in a tone that gets rid of that rhetoric which suggests every single blade of grass is going to be built on and that the common is going to be destroyed because that isn’t the case. If it goes ahead, it will be a significant change.

“I spent my life campaigning against this happening, but faced with those thousands of families here who haven’t got secure, affordable homes, I’m having to compromise on my fundamental values because those people need the security that the rest of us enjoy of a decent, secure home.” Opposition leader Cllr Sam Bromiley (Conservative, Parkwall & Warmley) said: “Whether intentional or not, your response to genuine concerns and fears people raised today was to patronise and slap down, and that is shameful.

“They have come here. They have stood in the rain. They have eloquently and emotionally given their concerns, and patronising the public will not advance your plan. We need to show them respect and not talk them down.

“These are people standing up for the greenbelt and their community against these proposals. They’re not against new homes, they just have to be proportional in the right places, with communities and not against them.

“So will you commit to more meaningful language, more meaningful engagement with the SOGS group and residents and stop using language that demonises local people and patronises them?” Cllr Willmore said: “I’m not patronising anybody when I say we have a crisis that we’re all struggling to deal with.

“I have great sympathy for everybody affected by it because I’ve been there personally in my own community. If somebody else can find a better way of addressing this, I would be delighted to hear it.

“Wherever you put these houses, it causes harm to the established, existing communities. 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 Cllr Ian Boulton (Labour, Staple Hill & Mangotsfield) said: “After several attempts over the years to produce a Local Plan that haven’t succeeded, at the moment every piece of green space is up for grabs for speculative development. By having a Local Plan it protects the green spaces because we’re not having to fight off those speculative developments.”

Public consultation will begin this week and close the week ending September 13. Following feedback, the final version will be prepared and consulted on again next January before being submitted in June 2025 for examination, which is expected in October next year, ahead of adoption by April 2026.