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Claims Stoke Lodge campaigners have been ‘gagged’
Campaigners prevented from delivering a petition to Bristol City Council opposing a mile-long, 6ft metal fence around Stoke Lodge playing fields have demanded to see the lawyers’ advice that “gagged” them.
The authority’s monitoring officer ruled that the petition, which has more than 4,000 signatures, enough to trigger a special debate at full council, could not be heard because of threatened legal action by We Love Stoke Lodge protest group.
Residents have been locked in a dispute for eight years with Cotham School, which the council decided in 2018 could erect a fence around the 22-acre site, in Westbury-on-Trym, under permitted development rules.
is needed now More than ever
Residents turned out to protest the fence being erected early this year
The school has always maintained this measure is vital to ensure the safety of students, who have recently returned to the fields after being unable to use them since 2014.
Work on the fence began in January, but was halted because of intervention from neighbours. It was finally completed earlier this month.
Speaking from the public gallery at a full council meeting on Tuesday, March 19, Susan Mayer said Stoke Lodge had been “violated just to satisfy a spurious health and safety claim” on fields used by pupils for PE lessons.
She said: “If this petition is to be prohibited, show us the evidence that forbids its airing in public.”
Another resident, Emma Burgess, said: “I’m just one of thousands of Britolians your monitoring officer has silenced this evening by refusing to let us show you our petition video.
“We expected our council to listen to us, so why bother asking for views on the new green space strategy if you won’t listen to a community that is today locked out of our only local green space?
“Go there now and you will see a once beautiful and unique place that you designated as important open space, and it is empty.
“It is surrounded by a mile-long, 2m high fence and its gates are locked.
“So please help us get our claim to public rights of way heard in the next few months, not years.”
Helen Powell was applauded in the public gallery at the full council meeting
Campaigner Helen Powell told mayor Marvin Rees: “The lease between Cotham School and the council prohibits the erection of any buildings or any other structures at Stoke Lodge.
“Does it surprise you that your officers apparently think a 1.5km-long, 2m high metal fence concreted into the ground is not a structure?”
Rees replied: “The team has taken legal advice and it has been deemed not to be a structure..
He said: “I do actually have no power over this.
“The secure fencing was installed over permitted development rights rather than a planning application, which means responsibility rests with the public rights of way and greens committee.
“They advise an investigation into a Stoke Lodge playing fields rights of way application will commence late 2020.
“You need to pursue it through the correct committee, but I’ve always said I will come out to meet you and I hope all sides in this dispute can sit around a table and find some way of crafting a way forward.
“I’ve seen people come together over bigger divides in the world.”
But Tory councillor for Stoke Bishop, Peter Abraham, told the meeting: “Why am I being denied confidentially to see that council’s advice?
“As a ward councillor, I have written and said I promise to sign a form that I will keep it totally confidential but I have still been denied it.
“You are gagging us,” he added.
Adam Postans is a local democracy reporter for Bristol
Read more: Stand off at Stoke Lodge
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