Mayor comes under cross-party fire on arena

The mayor has come under attack for blaming councillors for stalling the long-awaited arena project.

Planning permission was deferred at a meeting where Lib Dems, Labour, Tories and Greens agreed the proposals were incomplete.

The delays are thought to be costing £80,000 a week and may mean the arena is not approved until after the election. “It was clear to me that it wasn’t just planning, but politics,” the mayor said after the meeting.

But Lib Dems, Labour and the Tories have hit back in blogs and statements in the days following the decision. Snippets of their views are below, alongside the Greens who have stopped short of criticising the mayor directly:

Gary Hopkins, Lib Dem

Whichever way you look at it the deferral of the arena planning application is not good news for Bristol. The matter has degenerated into a political row with, as usual, the mayor blaming those members who voted for the deferral and saying that they were “playing politics”.

Quite frankly this accusation ran out of legs some years ago. Lashing out at all is not a way to make friends and I think we are starting to see this in the deteriorating relationships with neighbouring councils which could even lead to a failure of the devolution bid.

I made a statement to the committee calling for extra conditions to protect local residents and with some positive suggestions on how to reduce the problems. I specifically asked the committee not to throw out or delay the scheme as it has already been held up by the administration more than it should have been.

Liberal Democrat members on the committee voted against the deferral and instead put forward extra conditions, such as local parking mitigation measures, and a demand that all of the conditions come back to the committee to be signed off rather than being delegated to officers. A timetable was proposed so that work could continue but conditions could be checked off in plenty of time.

The application was a shambles and this is at least partly due to the fortress mentality of the mayor and senior officers. Important issues were just not considered and the Labour member who said that if this had been a private developer it would never have even reached the committee was right.

The general chaos was added to by the cabinet the night before having a list of proposals , including the “White Rabbit” car park dismissed by the Mayor whose officers had written the reports only days earlier.

It seems to be the case that a promise has been made to the operator about parking and the car park was an attempt to cover this but sent things in to turmoil. I have sympathy with the Labour and Tory Councillors who chose the deferral but I do not think it was the most productive way out of the mess.

Helen Holland, Labour

I am disappointed the mayor has attacked and blamed a cross-party, independent Committee decision to defer the Arena application.

Let me be clear. This decision was taken by councillors from different parties, who viewed the facts as the Council presented them. Planning is a quasi-judicial process. We don’t play politics with it. Our job is to make decisions based on the council’s own Planning Policy and ensure development complies with policy, and does not adversely affect the city. In the case of the arena application, councillors did just that, while all making absolutely clear our passion to see the arena come to fruition, but making sure it works for everyone, including local residents.

This decision has been portrayed as being principally about parking, but that ignores the detailed debate that councillors had, where many said that they would favour not having a car park on site.

When the Council makes a planning application, it is our duty as elected representatives to ensure that it meets (or exceeds) the standards we expect from everyone else. That being the case we were all disappointed that officers advised us that only half the number of cycle spaces that policy requires were proposed, and that, despite months of questions, the applicants have not completed a Travel Plan, or provided their Park and Ride strategy.

The mayor may dismiss these concerns, but without reassurance on these things, the committee did the only thing, deferring the application. We need to get the Arena right, so I hope Council officers will address those issues and come back with an application we can all support.”

Peter Abraham, Conservative

I am shocked that the mayor has resorted to impugn our judgement and complain that the decision taken was “playing politics”. It is not unusual for planning committees to go against professional recommendations and, in this instance, all that is happening is a short delay in determination until our next meeting on April 6.

It would be interesting to know the basis for mayor Ferguson’s assertion that this necessary pause (to enable clarification on certain aspects of this huge development to take place) somehow puts the whole scheme ‘at risk’.

I fear it is the mayor who is perhaps guilty of indulging in a little political game-playing here. This application was only lodged four months ago and, in my experience, is being dealt with far quicker than comparable projects. Therefore, one must question any claim that this postponement will significantly add to the overall cost of the Arena.

I conclude by suggesting that it is not helpful for the mayor to display such public acts of pique. Delivery of the Bristol Arena has cross-party consensus, support and enormous goodwill. However, the people of Bristol would not thank their elected representatives who sit on development committees if we did not seek to safeguard their interests.

In this case, there is an obligation on us to try to ensure that we get every possible detail and foreseeable contingency right at this stage of the planning process. The alternative strategy, seemingly being advocated by the mayor, is to nod everything through and worry about the consequences later. Well, such an approach is neither sensible nor advisable.

One would hope the Mayor would be working with us to get this totemic development right, rather than resort to writing cheap headlines for his election address.

Deb Joffe, Green Party

Personally I’m not sure that it needed to be deferred; the committee could have imposed some conditions on the application but allowed building work to begin.

I am fairly confident that the sudden announcement at cabinet on Tuesday of a very ill-considered proposal to build a car park on the newly acquired Bath Road site on the other side of the railway tracks played its part in undermining the confidence the committee had in the transport planning of the Arena team. Although it wasn’t part of the planning submission it had obvious ramifications and it was hard to see how the two could be separated.

I have always been a big supporter of the plans to have a virtually car-free Arena. This has been pioneered successfully by Cardiff and the Bristol site can only work in this way. It is also very important that the Arena Island provides a good cycle and pedestrian alternative route linking Bath Road to Temple Quarter and East Bristol – the current shared path is absurdly narrow and dangerous.

Hopefully the Arena team will get their act together quickly and satisfy the committee. What I would say is that more consultation at an early stage with residents and their elected representatives would greatly assist in making plans which are robust and workable.

Read more: Mayor blames politics for arena delay