Don't Believe Rovers' Propaganda

The new planning application does represent significant changes to the commercial, residential and stadium development proposed at the Memorial Ground site, contrary to the claims made by Rovers in the Evening Post article on Saturday 19 Jan 2008.

Their claims are misleading at best (rebutted here in order of increasing significance):

Claim: The size of the convenience store and restaurant both reduced.
Reality: The convenience store will be reduced from 375 sq.m to 370 sq.m which is a 1% reduction. Five square meters is about the size of a small domestic bathroom. The restaurant will be reduced from 1110 sq.m to 1056 sq.m losing 54 sq.m which is a reduction of just under 5%. Again this is not a huge difference. They neglect to mention that the education centre will be reduced from 280 sq.m down to 121 sq.m which is a reduction of 56% or over half. In other words it used to be as big as eight hotel rooms but is now only as big as four. The creche too has seen dramatic reductions from 188 sq.m down to only 100 sq.m nearly halving that as well.

Claim: Number of hotel bedrooms down from 112 to 97.
Reality: The hotel has always had 84 bedrooms and still has 84 bedrooms. It has also always been the case that the stadium hospitality boxes could be used as additional bedrooms for the hotel. It is the number of hospitality boxes that has been reduced which changes the theoretical number of bedrooms in the hotel from 112 (84 rooms + 28 boxes) to 97 (84 rooms +13 boxes). It was improbable that all 28 boxes would ever be used as hotel rooms and it seems Rovers also believe it is unlikely to need a full 28 hospitality boxes for matches either.

Claim: Number of student flats down from 105 to 99.
Reality: In both the old and new plans there will be accommodation for 546 students. Each student flat was to have five or six bedrooms and one bedroom sized communal room. The change simply means the number of bedrooms per flat has increased. Previously there were 21 flasts with six bedrooms, the remainder having only five bedrooms. The new plans have 51 flats with six bedrooms. Considering that there is no other breakout space for students within the building or on the site, this represents a further reduction in quality of living conditions for students.

Claim: There will be 25 per cent fewer lorry runs (up to 10,000) carrying excavated spoils from the site.
Reality: It sounds like the reduction could be up to 10,000 lorry runs, that would imply that the total number of lorry loads was 40,000. But one lorry every five minutes eight hours a day would require 417 working days of lorries to clear the site, essentially the entire 18 months allocated for the build. Therefore one can only assume that 10,000 lorry loads is the total to be removed and of this up to 2,500 may be saved. Even so the remaining 7,500 lorry loads will take 78 working days at one every five minutes which is a few days short of four full months of dirt removal.

Claim: The roof height is going to be lower or the same as it was before.
Reality: This is completely untrue in both letter and spirit, because the building will in fact be the same height in most parts or a whole storey higher in some places. The extra floor added to the north east corner means that even the north side of the building is pushing the height limits allowable under loss of daylight regulations (previously this was the only side that did not reach or exceed these limits). The arched roof trusses are now significantly taller and will be more visible from near and far. The roof over the stadium in the previous plans sloped inwards to the centre, and would therefore not be very visible from anywhere. The new plans have a fairly steep roof which slopes outwards and is therefore much more visible from everywhere. They also fail to mention that the student flats on the sixth floor used to face into the pitch but in the new plans face outwards which means the neightbouring houses are overlooked by considerably more of the student flats.

Claim: This has not been a cost-cutting exercise.
Reality: Anyone who knows about building will know that groundworks are one of the most costly areas of any build. The fact that this significant cost has been reduced by 25% and that the commercial aspects of the stadium and enabling development remain at the same scale as before suggests that either they are in fact attempting to generate a profit from the development or the initial plans and budgets were grossly inaccurate. The finances of this plan must be open to public scrutiny.

This is just the latest chapter in a long history of Rovers asking for something, getting it and then asking for more.

The North Stand application which was granted permission gave them everything they realistically needed including a increase in capacity to 13,200, an increase which could credibly be mitigated via supporter buses and park and rides.

Emboldened by that success, they then asked for a whole new stadium with a capacity of 18,500 and all of the enabling developments (hotel, student flats, etc) which was far in excess of their needs and of the area to support. They argued that this was not an increase of 6,500 from the still current stadium capacity of 12,000 but rather only 5,300 capacity increase over what had already been granted. Suggested mitigation measures ceased to be credible but permission was granted anyway.

Having been given permission for this excess, they are back for yet another helping. This is why there is such strong local resistance to these plans, we have seen it all before over the last eleven years. And there is no way to satisfy their demands because as soon as they get what they ask for they are asking for more.

If their attitude towards their neighbours, the residents in the area, was anything better than contempt, they would have looked at "better use of the stadium area" before the last application so as to reduce its size and impact. As it stands, the neighbours on all four sides of this site will be faced with a six and seven story building at the bottom of their gardens with traffic and crowd noise 24/7.

These plans cannot be allowed to simply get a rubber stamp from the council and the issues must be properly and publicly discussed and some limit must be placed on the constant demands of Bristol Rovers (1883) Limited.

We are also tired of the Evening Post acting as the mouthpiece for Rovers' propaganda. In the run up to the planning application a year ago Mike Norton Editor in Chief of the Evening Post wrote a personal letter of support for the plans, on company letterhead, and insisted the paper would be "editorialy objective". As a member of a group trying to get its opinion heard, it certainly does not feel that objective.

New Galleries of Stadium

We have produced two new galleries showing the changes in the stadium plans. These are using the images provided in the application itself and are not images we have created. There is narrative text along with the images to explain what is seen and how things have changed.

Evolution - The first gallery looks at the evolution of the plans since they were first presented in October 2005.

Comparrison - The second gallery looks at side by side views of the stadium as proposed last year and as in the new planning application.

HorfieldROSE Replies to Ombudsman

HorfieldROSE has now replied to the Ombudsman's provisional view letter. Our reply letter, which ran to eleven pages of text and fifty-five pages of new evidence, was sent Wednesday 16th January to meet a mutually agreed new deadline of the 18th January 2008.

Whilst we cannot publish our letter for the time being due to the quasi-judicial procedures the Ombudsman follows when working on a complaint of this nature, we can assure residents we have explored every aspect of the Councils planning procedures and codes of conduct and ensured all 'deviations' have been included in the response.

Also, the planning application documentation held by Bristol City Council has been searched during many visits to the Council's planning office and again relevant information supporting our case has been passed to the Ombudsman's Office.

We will be contacting the Ombudsman's Investigator next week to seek a date of reply to our letter, though we suspect, given the amount of new information we have supplied, he will only be able to give an estimated timescale.

However, I think we would all agree that the Investigator should be allowed the time to do a thorough job of investigating our complaints, rather than rushing the work and missing so vital issues.

Yet Another Planning Application in Jan 2008

We had heard in December that Rovers were intending to make further changes to their planned stadium. We also understood that these changes were significant enough that they would require an additional planning application. We also understand that they were not permitted to make this new application until the S106 agreement on the plan given approval this time last year had been signed.

All this now seems to be true. It is hardly coincidence that the day after the S106 was signed (almost six months later than planned), a new application was made. The description on the Bristol City Council website is as follows:

Amendments to regeneration of existing stadium to provide a new 18,000 seated (18,500 Capacity) stadium and ancillary accommodation, hotel (84 rooms), 99 student flats (546 rooms), restaurant, convenience store, offices, associated car, coach and cycle parking, landscaping and associated works.

Documents became available for viewing on the Bristol City web site yesterday

click here for the application page

click here for the actual documents for downloading

It would seem that the stadium site has more bedrock than was initially expected and this has meant that the excavations needed for the original plan would be too costly. They have therefore had to increase the height of the stadium especially around the north west corner and the hotel tower where an extra story has been added.

They have also juggled some of the use of space. The conference centre has been removed completely, presumably because this was one of the things that was not going to be sold off up front and as such losing it does not lower their initial build budget. The number of student flats has been reduced from 105 to 99, but does not seem to have reduced the actual number of students which is still around the 550 mark.

Action from you

Currently this application is not going to go before the development control committee and is just going to be looked at by planning officers and then probably passed without much problem, UNLESS we make a fuss about it.

There are currently no notices in place in the streets around the stadium but the deadline for comments is set as the 31 Jan 2008 and the determination date is 4 April 2008. The fact that notices have not been placed in the area and as yet no one we know of has received a letter of notification it is unreasonable for them to set a deadline for consultation at the end of this month.

We are making requests to members of the Development Control Committee and to the planning officers that this application is sent before the Development Control Committee so that it can be properly and publicly debated.

Remember that planning officers and councillors are here to help and are not the enemy, so it is vitally important that any correspondence is polite and respectful. However, it is also important for you to express as clearly as you can how angry you are about these proposals and as explicit as you can be about how this will affect you.

Please contact Councillors on the Development Control North Committee and convey the following message:

Dear Councillor

I have heard that Bristol Rovers Football Club has made yet another planning application (08/00061/F) which entails significant revisions of the existing proposals. I understand that, as a councillor serving on the DCC North committee and a local member, you have the power to request that this application should be heard by that committee. This application appears to fall within the category of exceptions to the Delegation Scheme for Planning Applications. As the application relates to extensive and fundamental alterations from the original application, which was itself a major and controversial application, it is essential that the application goes before the committee.

David Kitson is both a member of the committee and a councillor for the Bishopston Ward and voted against the plans last year.

Of the other councillors on this committee Charles Price voted in favour of the plans last year, Albert Murphy voted against, Abdul Malik was on the committee but did not attend the meeting due to family commitments. All of the other members of the committee are new since the vote last year.

It would also be good for the planning department to know that you are concerned. The application says that the consultation period ends on 31 Jan 2008 but we have been assured that it will actually end 21 days from the date that the planning department sends out notifications, which has not yet happened.

Please check this site regularly as we will post any additional information we have here as soon as we can.

Justifying the Unjustifiable

Anyone who saw the handling of the planning application that was submitted by Rovers in 2006 and which was unbelievably granted permission in 2007 will no doubt wonder if there were unseen forces at work. How could such an inappropriate plan receive permission?

One is made even more curious when seeing documents in the application file such as an email to Kit Stokes, the planning officer in charge of the application, from Michael Rogers who is a Design/Project Officer at City Centre Projects & Urban Design, which is part of Bristol City Council.

His email begins

From an urban Design perspective, I find the proposed development very difficult to support. The retention of the sport stadium facility within this location, as an integral part of the character and identity of the local neighbourhood, is to be welcomed from my perspective. I feel, however, that this benefit is wholly overshadowed by the scale, form and intensity of enabling development proposed. From an Urban Design perspective, I consider that the proposal raises four fundamental problems:

1. The creation of an inappropriate mix and intensity of development for such a backland location within the centre of a development block. [...]

2. The visual impact of the proposed development. Based upon the submitted visual impact images, I would wholly disagree with the author's statement that 'the development will have very little or no adverse visual impact.' [...]

3. The detrimental impact of the proposed building upon neighbouring residential amenity' overshadowing and the shear overbearing impact of the building's scale/proximity appear to be the critical issues here [...]

4. The poor quality living and working environment for the proposed enabling development.

The four points have been truncated here to give the essence of his objections but each point is followed by a lengthy paragraph explaining the case against allowing such an application to be granted permission. But then amazingly he continues:

Notwithstanding the above fundamental concerns with regard to the proposed development, I am mindful of the Council's corporate commitment towards assisting the Football Club in its achievement of an improved facility at the Memorial Ground.

He then goes on to suggest a number of mitigations that would help to shoe horn the application through the planning process and that the plans might be presented to the South West Design Review Panel for their input. Their input as seen in the officers report bares a striking resemblance to the suggestions made by Mr Rogers. Click here to download the full document from Mr Rogers to Mr Stokes.

When the planning officers report came out, it seemed clear the the author was tasked with reconciling the unreconcilable. No where was this more apparent in the three consecutive paragraphs at the end of page 42 and beginning of page 43 of his report. In the first paragraph he admits:

Overall it is acknowledged that a modern sporting stadium of the scale required will inevitably appear out of place in a predominantly two-storey residential environment, this is a dilemma that is in evidence in towns and cities all of the country.

So he agrees that stadia are out of place, but then in the next paragraph says

It is considered that the proposal would enrich the local skyline, whilst clearly identifying the location of this landmark facility.

This is not a counter argument simply a contradiction of the earlier statement. And possibly fearing that people will not swallow this contradictory statement he adds

Whilst there are concerns about the overall scale, it is considered that the stadium will only be visible from a limited number of vantage points.

This too is largely untrue. The current stadium is visible from many places in and around Horfield and beyond, but the fact that is is a dark colour and not a bulky structure means that it is far less visible. The new stadium in contrast will have significantly more bulk and mass and will be clad in brighter materials which will make it highly visible from vantage points near and far.

In the week after the application was granted permission at the Development Control Committee meeting last January, we examined the "key issues" section of the planning officers report.

We simply counted the problems that the officer cites. We also count whether he suggests a mitigation to lessen the problem, a condition to contain the problem within limits, simply excuses the problem without offering any solution or suggests that there will actually be a benefit from the new development. These are his judgements not ours, we are simply counting them, although we do not necessarily agree with all the conclusions. We also ranked problems between one start and three star (three star being more serious than one star) and put the results in a table.



The above table shows the solutions to the various key issues and how they are handled. Twenty three issues are remedied in part by mitigation or conditions while twenty one are unresolved and simply excused. A further six items are claimed as enhancements as a result of the plans. The poor quality of amenity for the students in student flats is not excused or remedied and so does not appear in the above table. Also the two issues on waste and recycling were not problems nor enhancements are are not included in the above totals. Some items included both excuses and enhancements in which case the issue was counted in both columns.

You can download our report which lists all of these issues in detail explaining what each key issue is how it is to be resolved and any notes about whether we agree with the problem or solution.

We can only hope that the latest planning application will be allowed to stand or fall on its own merits and that all those factors are openly and clearly visible to planners, committee members and the public.

The Council's Vision

When you got your council tax bill last year it was accompanied by a booklet entitled "Your Council Tax and Business Rates explained 2007 -2008" with all sorts of wonderful sounding mission and vision statements. But how does it hold up against the real world?

"A thriving economy"

Aim - to maintain and develop a competitive
economy, ensure all people and neighbourhoods can
contribute to, and benefit from, that thriving economy
and to make Bristol one of the most attractive places
in Europe

Apparently with the exception of Horfield where nearby pubs now close on Rovers matchday afternoons, The John Cabot licencing suspension in part due to football associated violence, means it has not yet reopened. Book Cupboard forced to pull down shutters and shelter pedestrians from violence in the street (reported in Swindon, but not Bristol) on a Saturday afternoon residents severely restricted from travelling and being more economically active on matchdays due to traffic densities curtailing access.

Health and Well Being

To ensure everyone in Bristol has the opportunity to
be as healthy, fulfilled and as independent as possible.

Unless they live in Horfield where up to 150 disabled sports fans must compete for only 8 disabled parking spaces instead of the current 32. Where air pollution concerns are ignored and deemed insignificant despite planners insisting on restrictions over students owning cars and approving a hotel without parking, to mitigate traffic which proves there's already a big problem

A High Quality Environment

Bristol to be a green capital of Europe, tackling the cause
of climate change and creating a clean and attractive

Where urban designer comments are ignored as are environment BCC's Sustainable City Team's comments, in terms of the failure to commit to lower carbon technologies presented. Also ignored BCC ecology officer who suggests a wildlife survey to establish existing species within existing natural environment.

Balanced and Sustainable Communities

with a high quality of life where no one is disadvantaged

Unless they live in Strathmore Rd where their daylight will be compromised or round the perimeter of stadium where the noise pollution is likely to keep infants awake beyond their normal sleeping hours. Not to mention shift workers etc.

The Final Insult (page 28) says

"Our Mission: to improve public safety through preventing, protecting and responding" giving sage advice about "knowing your escape route"

Tell that to the ambulance driver stuck in traffic for 15 minutes in Gloucester Rd on matchday, compromising patient safety.

When you consider the many roads bordering the site which are inaccessible to large emergency vehicles not least on matchdays, it compounds the view that insufficient diligence has been applied to plans, which give rise to serious conflicts with BCC's "corporate aims".

The S106 Signing is Not the End

The start of the New Year has brought fresh challenges. It is almost a year since the contentious planning application meeting for the development of the Memorial Stadium and the S106 agreement has only just been signed, six months later than the originally slated deadline.

For many months now any questions we have raised with different Council departments involved have received the reply that nothing can be done until this agreement has been signed. So now we can ask the questions and expect the consultations that need to take place. Common sense would suggest that this should have happened before any signings but planning moves in mysterious ways!

We are not satisfied with the agreements about traffic volumes, noise, air quality, loss of light, parking, ‘Park and Ride’ provision, and will still continue to challenge the premises on which they are based. The Stadium Monitoring Group set-up needs to be representative of all views involved and have an independent basis.

We are still involved with the ‘Ombudsman’s investigation into the whole process.

There has been a revealing survey done by the Liberal Democrat party into the Resident’ Parking Zone. This could be a good foundation for talks about parking let’s encourage them to set up a meeting so our voices can be heard.

We are very concerned that the use of the site 24/7 has not been truly appreciated by the planners. This development is commercial with accompanying stadium facilities! We need to get the message across.

What HorfieldROSE can't understand is why so many of Bristol City Council officers' own questions or concerns about the proposals appear to remain unaddressed or ignored?


Now the S106 has been signed we can keep asking the questions, we can keep pointing out the problems. So if you have concerns, examples, questions, etc. now is the time to voice these. Contact your councillors, the planning department, the Avon and Somerset Police, the Parks department for parking on the Common. Send in your photographic or detailed examples and ask for a reply and intended action; continue to question until you are satisfied!

The recent Evening Post article suggested that Bristol Rovers will be holding an exhibition of plans later this month so another opportunity to question them too - and make sure it happens – too many promises have been unforthcoming.

The start of the New Year has brought fresh challenges; if you value the area and the community then speak out and make sure we are heard. Lots of different people saying ‘it matters to our quality of life’ shall not be ignored.