Features / Local Elections 2021
Ward profiles 2021: Clifton – ‘Our staff need to pay to come to work’
It is often said that Clifton gets treated differently to other areas of Bristol. Report some fly-tipping in Lawrence Hill? Get ignored. Report some fly-tipping in Clifton? A team gets sent round to sort out the problem straight away.
All anecdotal, of course, but to emphasise the point, on Wednesday morning an employee of Bristol Waste was sweeping assorted detritus from the pavement and road on Hope Chapel Hill on the way from Hotwells to Clifton Village and in the far south-west of Clifton ward.
Leaf cuttings are the least of the litter problems of other areas of the city but the worker had created a nice pile here.
is needed now More than ever
Cleaning the streets of Clifton ward – photo: Martin Booth
Midway up Hope Chapel Hill is Hotwells Primary School, where the mural overlooking their main playground – known as ‘the green’ – is currently being touched up.
Opposite the recently installed new boundary fencing and gates – paid for by funding from Bristol City Council – sits the sadly empty Adam & Eve, now unlikely ever to return to being a pub and a building that developers want to turn into into flats.
Looking up Hope Chapel Hill with Hotwells Primary School on the left and the former Adam & Eve pub on the right – photo: Martin Booth
Up in Clifton Village, Scott Robson from Reg the Veg says that some days there is still plenty of footfall past the shop and other days it’s really quiet.
The much-loved greengrocers on Boyce’s Avenue has branched out into home delivery during lockdown.
With the pedestrianisation of the road, however, their own delivery vans are prevented from pulling up nearby for most of the day.
“Our staff are also having to pay to park to come to work here or else park miles away,” says Scott, Reg the Veg’s wholesale manager.
“It (pedestrianisation) might be to the benefit of more footfall, but we still have to load and unload.”
Scott Robson at Reg the Veg – photo: Martin Booth
The life expectancy of a woman living in Clifton ward is 89.2, significantly better than the Bristol average of 82.8 and the highest of any area of the city.
The ward is currently represented by two Green councillors: Paula O’Rourke and Jerome Thomas. In May, Thomas has his eyes on a grander prize than the leafy suburbs, being the Green candidate for WECA metro mayor.
On Boxing Day morning last year, O’Rourke was in Canynge Square ensuring residents that the city council was looking into a sink hole that had appeared on Christmas Day and that she had already been in touch with mayor Marvin Rees.
A councillor’s workload is certainly varied, with one current priority for O’Rourke being to ensure economically viable alternatives to Bristol Zoo selling off their land in Clifton to a developer when they close the site by late 2022 in order to move to Wild Place.
O’Rourke said: “When the zoo was established as a charity, its purpose was to educate the public on animal diversity; but now we need to educate people on loss of animal diversity.
“Selling off the site for residential development is an unambitious legacy.”
When Bristol Zoo relocates to the Wild Place Project, its historic Clifton site will be closed and sold – photo: Google
Main photo: Martin Booth
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