FIGHTING THE DEVELOPMENT
Bristol City Council formalised planning permission in June 2024. This opened the opportunity for us to challenge the planning process with a Judicial Review.
We are fighting proposals for 196 hideous flats of up to six stories high. You can support the legal challenge here.
There are also huge concerns about how the proposals were advanced. Political interference, misleading claims and a failure to consult the public properly are just some of the criticisms that have been levelled at Bristol Zoological Society and Bristol City Council throughout the planning process.
The Zoological Society and the Council also regularly claim the development would provide ‘much needed housing’ and an opportunity for ‘free public access’ to the Zoo.
These claims are misleading.
In fact, none of the housing would be affordable for most Bristolians, and any developer can apply to remove the condition of public access after 5 years. It is entirely likely that over time the Gardens will become a private gated community and the preserve of rich Bristolians. But in the process the rich biodiversity of the Gardens would be destroyed.
PRESERVING A HISTORIC GARDEN
Some 200 years ago, Victorian benefactors gifted these Gardens to the citizens of Bristol in perpetuity as a Pleasure Garden - a sanctuary where everyone could delight in the natural world and enjoy the peace and tranquility of beautiful surroundings.
If this development goes ahead, the herbaceous borders would be ripped out and almost half the historic tree canopy felled. An estate road and parking would be introduced into the Gardens for the first time.
Our urban green spaces are vanishing and habitat loss and climate change are accelerating at a horrifying rate. All of us would benefit physically and mentally from more access to the natural world. The proposed development is clearly the wrong plan in the wrong place.
We believe that the solution - for all our communities, and Bristol Zoological Society as well - is to work constructively together on an alternative. A new vision that meets the Zoological Society’s commercial objectives AND which preserves the precious biodiversity of the Gardens for future generations.
