Tag Archives: Housing Crisis

HUMAN WAREHOUSING JOY

Leave a reply
Derby Street Car Park
Derby Street car park: enough for eight homes?

Plans for eight “temporary accommodation pods” for homeless people in Derby Street Car Park, Redfield have been enthusiastically waved through by councillors on the planning committee bravely tackling ‘The Housing Crisis’ by supporting any old shit for the poor.

“Each unit would be 2.7 metres high, 7.9 metres deep and 3.8 metres wide, providing a total of 24 square metres of floorspace,” explains the planning report. That’s 13 square metres below the Tories’ ungenerous 37 square metre National Space Standard for one bed accommodation then.

Planning officers dodged around this glaring issue by agreeing “the units are small” and then claiming they “offer a better alternative to the proposed residents”. Better than what isn’t stated.

Officers also said that as tenancies via the Salvation Army are limited to two years, the accommodation is temporary and space standards don’t apply. How temporary it will be remains to be seen. Especially as Bristol’s planning department appears to have no means of enforcing their own planning conditions any more.

Why fewer units couldn’t be built that met minimum National Space Standards wasn’t a matter explored by planning officers or councillors.

NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY IN SOUTH BRISTOL?

Leave a reply
NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY IN SOUTH BRISTOL?

An alliance of LABOUR and GREEN councillors – taking a break from pre-election climate emergency PR fisticuffs for the benefit of the gullible Guardian-readers of Bristol West – have granted planning permission for 1,400 homes on Hengrove Park, THE LARGEST PUBLIC OPEN SPACE IN SOUTH BRISTOL. Their reason for this crap decision is that old chestnut for foisting sub-standard shite on us – “THE HOUSING CRISIS”.

The development means the LOSS, not only, of a huge amount of PUBLIC OPEN SPACE and PLAYING FIELDS but of 850 TREES on the land. The poorly connected new housing estate is also likely to bring TRAFFIC CHAOS to local residential roads as more car users are poured into a working class suburb where a rapid transit system isn’t even AN UNLIKELY PROMISE from the Reverend Rees.

This is also the suburb already earmarked by the same climate emergency obsessed councillors as an ideal location for a NEW RING ROAD designed to CHOKE CHILDREN in south Bristol in order to get traffic out of the city centre to improve air quality there. The new road will also help get punters to an EXPANDED AIRPORT at Lulsgate.

Residents in Whitchurch and Hengrove are “LIVID” at the loss of their park and the planned destruction of their neighbourhood and local social media pages are full of lively chat about THE SELL-OUT COUNCILLORS and the scheme’s political architect, the Reverend Rees. The usually quiet and undersubscribed pages have leaped to life and are full of RIPE LANGUAGE on the subject of the city’s politicians. Popular terms include “wankers”; “arseholes”; “hypocrites” and “tossers”.

Hengrove and Whitchurch are unlikely to be returning any Labour or Green politicians to power any time soon, then.