Strange goings-on at Housing Association Curo’s new social housing in Old Market. A few lucky new residents were all set to move in October when suddenly the whole thing was called off.
The properties were meant to be connected to the new Old Market Heat Network, currently owned and run by Bristol City Council but being secretively handed over to Swedish energy giant, Vattenfall, at a knockdown price.
Residents now have been told they can’t move in to their new homes until January at the earliest because of “a disagreement about the heating with the council”.
Let’s hope the disagreement is nothing serious and that our city’s public assets are still on the way to a global corporation to make a fat profit from.
The Reverend Rees’s deranged efforts to
build his way out of his carefully branded “HOUSING CRISIS” is
hitting south Bristol and its open spaces very hard. Following last month’s
unveiling of the Reverend’s IKEA/BOKLOKS housing solution, giving his loopey
evangelical mate Jez “I’m no housing expert” Sweetland free rein to
build 200 IKEA chipboard homes for the DESPERATE and the VULNERABLE on the
narrow verge of a trunk road in Hengrove, comes news of another attempt to grab
open space in south Bristol.
Filwood residents expressed their
displeasure at Rees’s madcap “CHIPBOARD AND PRAYER” plans for
the Airport Road at a cabinet meeting last month and community GROUP KNOWLE
WEST FUTURE asked that the council, at least, reduce the number of homes
planned for the small and narrow tree-filled site to 100. The group said, “A
possible 400 people emanating from this site would be a significant addition to
that area and if that is to happen other parts of community retail and
infrastructure need to be improved.”
Meanwhile, less than a mile away at
Broadbury Road in the heart of Knowle West, Curo Housing Association have
unveiled plans for 47 homes on a small piece of COUNCIL-OWNED OPEN SPACE
WITH A PLAYGROUND behind Broad Plain House. And the community are not
impressed that their wildlife and rights of way are to be traded away by the
council for concrete, traffic and overshadowing by large buildings.
Residents have also pointed out that
the site is part of GARDEN CITY PLANNING PRINCIPLES and that the area
was built to have green spaces. However, principles, planning or otherwise, are
in short supply at Rees’s DUMBED DOWN FREE MARKET COUNCIL or at even
dumber Curo. Instead Curo Communications Manager Valentina Warren gives the
game away by gormlessly explaining the complex planning vision underpinning the
Reverend’s “housing crisis”. “You can’t build new homes and have
green space at the same time,” she’s announced.
So that’s south Bristol’s NEW
ENVIRONMENTAL AND PLANNING STRATEGY sorted by Rees and his ragbag of
religious looney mates, voluntary sector morons and second rate Counts Louse
planning officials, then:
