One of the most controversial proposals to build new homes in Bristol in recent years looks set to be refused by councillors at City Hall next week, after planning officers recommended the scheme be turned down.
Lovell Homes’ plan to build on the Western Slopes - an area of woods and fields that slope from Novers Hill and Knowle West down to Bedminster - has attracted a total of 737 objections from local residents, and only a tiny handful of people supporting the idea.
In their report to next Wednesday’s planning committee, council officers say there are three reasons to refuse the plan.
Read next: Council experts come out against building on Bristol's Western Slopes
The first is that the proposed development fails to provide adequate transport links and infrastructure, waste storage and collection proposals and actually over-provides car parking spaces.
The second is that the site is too steep for people living at the bottom of the hill to be able to easily or safely walk or cycle, and the third is that proposal hasn’t demonstrated that the damage done to wildlife on the slopes can properly be mitigated against.
Lovell originally wanted to build 157 new homes on the land off Novers Hill, which has never been built on before and is currently paddocks, fields and steep-sloped woodland. The firm has since amended its plan to remove one of the blocks of apartments, changed the layout of the two cul-de-sacs proposed and reduced the number of new homes to 144, along with two new road entrances from Novers Hill, a new playground and a public open space.
Residents formed a ‘Friends of the Western Slopes’ campaign group when the plans were first unveiled back in early 2021, more than two years ago. Those plans came at the same time the rest of the Western Slopes green space at the Inns Court end, was earmarked for more than 400 new homes by Bristol City Council.
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The campaign group scored their first victory when they and Avon Wildlife Trust persuaded mayor Marvin Rees to cut back plans to build homes on the land, and now only around 70 are proposed on the smaller brownfield parts of the council-owned land there.
But Lovell Homes’ plan never went away, and it has taken almost two years to bring it to councillors to make a decision. In that time, the proposal has sparked much controversy. South Bristol MP Karin Smyth made a rare intervention to criticise the scheme for the way the developers were planning to position the social housing flats next to the industrial estate at the bottom of the slope, to act as a noise buffer for the more upmarket homes Lovell intended to build and sell at the top of the slope, something the MP said was 'deeply alarming'.
And environmental campaigners criticised the developers for proposing that the ecological damage of building new homes on a Site of Nature Conservation Interest would be mitigated by spending money enhancing wildlife habitats on a country estate several miles away in North Somerset.
Ecological experts at City Hall said that, although in theory the ecological damage from building homes on the SNCI site there isn’t enough grounds to automatically refuse permission outright, the developer’s proposals to mitigate it aren’t good enough.
And transport chiefs said they were unhappy with the developers’ proposal to create a footpath and cycle way inside the development, rather than along the narrow Novers Hill lane, and at one point there was even an objection that the proposed roads would be so steep that waste collections might be difficult.
Councillors will meet next Wednesday with a recommendation to refuse the scheme, something welcomed by Danica Priest, one of the founders of the Save the Western Slopes group.
“I’m grateful this dreadful application is being recommended for refusal but disappointed that the impact on the ecology of the site was given zero weight by the planning officer,” she said.
“I get that they are spooked by the Brislington Meadows decision but the ruling of an incompetent inspector doesn’t make ecology magically disappear. Around 700 trees will be destroyed if this application is approved.
“Brislington Meadows was an outline application and Novers Hill is a full planning application with an appeal decision from 2003 that deemed its nature important enough to save so the two sites are not comparable. This application has no offsetting plan in Bristol so what they are doing is stealing nature away from Knowle West and ‘enhancing’ the land of a wealthy landowner in Nailsea to compensate. That’s unacceptable.
“They also failed to mention that Lovell are using the affordable housing units as a sound shield for the market rate homes. Those flats will require ‘alternative ventilation’ because noise levels are too high for them to open their windows comfortably. We shouldn’t be replacing a designated site of nature conservation interest with housing that is inhabitable. I hope the committee will agree,” she added.
While there have been a total of 737 objections from local residents to the scheme, city planners have designated five submissions as being in support. Of those, two are actually against, and the other three comments made by local residents were in favour. One said: “Please build some homes, please ignore the adoption of green sloganeering about supposed ‘harms’ to some meadows.
“We need more homes in Bristol and are building nowhere near enough to combat the huge amounts of demand for housing the city attracts. If we want to create a vibrant, diverse, and affordable city we need projects such as this one to be rapidly approved and ignore the know-nothing NIMBY brigade,” they added.
