Last-minute reprieve for Yew Tree Farm

There was singing outside City Hall as protesters joined together in their latest battle to save Bristol’s last working farm.

The focus this time was to prevent councillors from voting to approve an expansion of South Bristol Cemetery onto land currently used by Yew Tree Farm.

At the end of a highly charged meeting, officers’ advice to approve the scheme was ignored and councillors voted down the plans for the land off Bridgwater Road.

Yew Tree Farm in Bedminster Down, where Bristol City Council wants to expand South Bristol Cemetery – photo: Danica Priest

But this is likely only to defer a binding decision that could be taken as early as the next planning meeting in October when the cemetery scheme comes back to the same group of councillors to vote on the plans with more information at their disposal.

Councillors were told that Bristol has just two more years of cemetery capacity remaining at current burial rates but several members were incredulous that no new sites across the city had been looked at before they were asked to approve an extension of South Bristol Cemetery which is likely to make Yew Tree Farm unviable as a working farm.

There was also some heated discussion about a perceived lack of consultation, with Yew Tree Farm farmer Catherine Withers herself revealing that she was not even considered to be a stakeholder by the council.

Labour councillor Steve Pearce was particularly scathing about this, telling Bristol City Council’s chief planner, Simone Wilding, that “there appears to have been a degree of fumbling the ball here”.

“It appears to me that there has been something of a lack of good manners,” said Pearce, on the same day that he revealed he will not be standing as a councillor in 2024.

“This appears to have been butter-fingered and ham-fisted.”

The new southern plot of the cemetery is planned to be outside the Site of Nature Conservation Interest (SNCI) and the two northern plots within the SNCI on land currently used by Yew Tree Farm – image: Bristol City Council

Wilding told councillors that the scheme to build new burial and memorial plots on council-owned land currently occupied by Yew Tree Farm “does give us resilience and space to plan for the longer term”.

She said: “The city is running out of space and needs to provide additional burial space for the next 15 years.”

To incredulous looks from Yew Tree Farm supporters, Wilding said that in net terms there would be an uplift in biodiversity gain with the expansion of the cemetery.

Green councillor Guy Poultney made an appeal to his fellow planning committee members, saying that it was not a dichotomy between protecting Yew Tree Farm “and the dead piling up in the city”.

Fellow Green councillor and committee chair, Ani Stafford-Townsend, said they would have liked to have other options for new cemetery space in the city to come to cabinet and scrutiny before the application to build on Yew Tree Farm had to be decided by their committee.

“There’s no reason to my mind for us making this irreversible decison for decades-long long-running impacts.”

They said that the city council is a “massive” land owner and also questioned why other options for new burial land have not been considered.

Catherine Withers (in green) with campaigner Danica Priest at the planning meeting on Wednesday evening – photo: Yew Tree Farm

Two hours before the start of the meeting, mayor Marvin Rees published a blog urging councillors to approve plans for the expansion of the cemetery, writing that “this application is a vital step in the city’s future”.

Speaking to Bristol24/7 after the meeting,Withers said that she was feeling “as exhausted as I did after I had my children”.

She said: “I know that the councillors were struggling but there is no struggle. This talk of mitigation is bollocks, quite frankly. Damage is going to be done…

“It’s a nonsense. I really feel that the councillors are not understanding the damage that is going to happen. It’s an SNCI and there is no mitigation for an SNCI which is why we are fighting for refusal.

“I get the fact that they probably want the farm to stay viable but you can’t keep chipping away at land.

“This is what happened to the the other 28 farms that were here 100 years ago and things are not changing, they are doing exactly what was happening to us 100 years ago.”

Withers added: “There is no excuse for them saying there are not other sites (for burials). They have taken the route of least resistance…

“I’m really pleased that the council have fully acknowledged how appallingly I have been treated by this administration.

“I won’t call it the councillors – it is this administration, it is our current leadership that is treating me like this and I don’t know why they want me out of the city but I’m so pleased that I have got at least another month to fight.”

Main photo: Yew Tree Farm

Read next:

• Dozens of protesters form human chain at Yew Tree Farm
• Short film showcasing life on threatened farm goes viral
• Mayor blasts council’s own staff for lack of due care and attention

Listen to Yew Tree Farm farmer Catherine Withers in episode 71 of the Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast: