The East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood saga rolls on...

Here we go, yet again… On Tuesday 10 December, a full meeting of Bristol City Council was held. Among the items for discussion was the implementation of the trial for the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood (EBLN). The Public Forum statements and questions for the meeting can be downloaded as a PDF from here. It’s very instructive reading through this document to see the range of opinions about the EBLN trial that were expressed in the form of statements and questions. However, people can be forgiven for getting the impression that a certain amount of lobbying by pro EBLN activists has been going on, given the balance of supportive statements and questions in relation to those opposing it. It should be noted that the start time for this meeting had been brought forward to 2pm – a very inconvenient time for any of the objectors to the EBLN who were obliged to be at work.

On Wednesday 11 December, this piece was published in the local media: Thousands urge council to pause controversial liveable neighbourhood in east Bristol – Alex Seabrook | B24/7 | 11.12.24. The article concerns a petition for the EBLN trial to be paused. While the article is about the objections, once you start reading through it, you do eventually come to coverage of what supporters of the EBLN trial are saying. Balance and all that as B24/7 will undoubtedly say. Regular readers of this blog will be aware that, to try and put it politely, I have reservations about the commitment of B24/7 to balance: We have questions... 4.12.24.

This Substack blog doesn’t pretend to be balanced. Bearing that in mind, I’d like to feature a very small selection of questions that were submitted to the council from those who would like to see the EBLN trial at least paused, if not halted altogether:

QUESTION PQ 15

Question submitted by: Debbie Strawford

To Cllr. Ed Plowden, Transport and Connectivity Committee Chair

Subject: East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood

With the new EBLN zone and no introduction of more regular buses. How do you suggest a mother living in Hanham drops her children to breakfast club when it opens at 7.30 and gets to work at the BRI (Bristol Royal Infirmary) by 8.30. This was possible before the zone was introduced.

QUESTION PQ 16

Question submitted by: Bex Martin

To Cllr. Ed Plowden, Transport and Connectivity Committee Chair

Subject: East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood

Why has the EBLN scheme gone ahead without support from the majority of local residents? This is against central government guidance. Bristol City Council has clearly ignored this guidance. Why is the Council stating that they have engaged with businesses within the EBLN boundary and that they have not reported any concerns? This is not true. When will the EBLN trial period end and how will 'success' be measured? No information has been published.

The above two questions serve to highlight what many people feel is the lack of any real effort being made by supporters of liveable neighbourhoods to understand why people feel they have no alternative but to drive.

However, it’s this pertinent question about transparency that wins the day for us:)

QUESTION PQ 18

Question submitted by: Jamie Bolley

To Cllr. Tony Dyer, Strategy and Resources Committee Chair and Leader of the Council

Subject: Publish spending

It would be of great interest to see a breakdown of this £6 million as I cannot begin to fathom that this could have cost any there close to 6m. You could have paid me 6m and I would have spent half a million on plant pots and paint, and a couple bollards, and pocketed the 5.5m. I want to see a breakdown of costs as again I cannot fathom how it has cost this much. For example let’s say there is 100 plant pots and 100 bollards this would average out at effectively £30,000.00 per bollard/plant pot, and personally I can’t get my head around this, therefore. Breakdown should be published so the public can be reassured that the council isn’t a corrupt cesspit that it is appearing to be.

When you have a trial liveable neighbourhood scheme covering a sizeable swathe of the east of Bristol that will impact the daily lives of many thousands of people, the very least the council can do is to be totally transparent about how it’s being implemented. It should be noted that going back to our Thurrock and Basildon Heckler days, we’ve always had what can best be described as a realistic view of the relationship between local authorities and transparency. It’s a relationship that has always been a very tenuous one in our view. That has not changed with our move from one side of the country to the other. It’s a case of same old s**t, different location. However, this cynicism should not preclude continuing to put pressure on those who presume to rule over us to come clean about what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and, last but by no means least, how much of our money it’s costing us.

I’ve written more posts than I care to think about on the issues surrounding so called liveable neighbourhoods, fifteen minute cities and how we move around in general: Posts on movement. In numerous posts, we’ve pointed out that while we understand the desire of residents to want to live in neighbourhoods that aren’t being wrecked by traffic, that can only come about in the context of a holistic transport strategy that offers genuinely viable alternatives to using a car. You don’t need me to tell you that public transport across Bristol and the surrounding region leaves a lot to be desired. Until we have a public transport network comprehensive and reliable enough to entice people away from their cars, all a liveable neighbourhood scheme is going to do is concentrate the same volume of traffic onto a smaller section of the road network.

Despite what some liveable neighbourhood supporters may say, the above sceptical view of them is actually quite widely held. That includes the Bristol Anarchist Federation who posted this status on X not that long ago:

As far as I can tell the council plan for the liveable neighbourhood scheme is:

1) Prevent rat runs through neighbourhood (yey)

2) Cause traffic to get worse (uhhh)

3) Thus people will use alternatives to cars (I guess?)

4) Fail to make any of these alternatives better (fail)

As far as I can tell the council plan for the liveable neighbourhood scheme is:

5) One of the alternatives gets worse as bus fares increase, and lack of segregated bus lanes makes them even more unreliable due to 2)

Given the somewhat troubled history we’ve had with the Anarchist Federation at times over the years, the fact that we’re broadly in alignment with them regarding liveable neighbourhoods is quite something!

As I’ve written before, what I want to debate are the issues surrounding the implementation of liveable neighbourhoods within the context of a holistic understanding of how our towns and cities have evolved to a point where too many of us have no choice but to drive. I also want to discuss that in the context of a concerted campaign to significantly improve the public transport offering that’s available. Last but by no means least, there’s the discussion on how planning philosophy can evolve so the necessity to move around as much as we’re obliged to is reduced while at the same time, we still have the freedom and means to move around as we wish, but in a more sustainable way. This is something I briefly dealt with in this piece: A new concept? 23.2.23.

Recently, we and others have had to spend too much time going down rabbit holes regarding biased media coverage of the implementation of liveable neighbourhoods and, what to all intents and purposes appears to be the manipulation by supporters of them of the discussion around them. As I’ve previously written, it’s amusing to see the lengths some people will go to in order to discredit anyone who is critical of the concept of a liveable neighbourhood in isolation from the context of a holistic planning and transport policy. However, this kind of thing can only be amusing for so long before it begins to pall and the gloves have to come off...