‘I feel I have managed to make a difference in many ways’

I often hear it said, usually by opposition councillors, that we have no power to change anything. According to this mantra, the mayor makes every decision, and nothing can happen without his say-so.

That has certainly not been my experience as a newly elected councillor in Brislington East. In the past two years, I feel I have managed to make a difference in many ways, and more recently, with the election of my colleague Katja, believe we are starting to make some real progress in bringing improvements to the area.

So what have we done? Well, in March 2020, just a few weeks after being elected, I worked with council officers and MP Kerry McCarthy on a bid for funding to investigate whether it was feasible to re-open a railway station in St Anne’s.

Many people have been talking about this for a long time, but with new funding streams available under the Restoring Your Railways programme, this was an opportunity to finally see if there was a future for this project.

The officers provided the expertise and I provided the local knowledge, and together we created a successful bid.  Since then I have worked closely with the council, WECA and Network Rail to put together the strategic case for the station.

A full report has gone to government and they will make the final decision. It may be that we get to proceed to the next stage, or it may be that a new station is simply not financially viable, but at least we will finally know.

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In our area of Brislington there are very few community-led organisations – those that do exist focus mainly on our amazing green spaces, for example the Friends of Brislington Brook and the Friends of Eastwood Farm, to name but two. This means that when funds become available to help develop our community, we often miss out.

In many other areas, the councillor’s job can be just to sign-post the sources of funding and local groups will make the applications. In our area, we have had to take a more direct approach.

Tim with mayor Marvin Rees in Brislington meadows – photo: Marvin Rees

So, when the Welcome Back Fund was introduced to help high streets recover from Covid-19, my co-councillor Katja Hornchen put in a bid herself for funds to run a craft market on Brislington Hill. Not only that, but Katja also had to sort out the licensing, furniture, marketing materials and stall holders. This is a lot for a school teacher to take on in her spare time, but the result was a wonderful, well attended market which took place at the end of March (in terrific weather).

As councillors, we won’t be able to run a market here regularly, we simply don’t have the time, but what Katja has done is to prove that the concept is viable. We are now hoping to work with other local residents to try to make the market a regular occurrence and bring some much-needed footfall to the area.

Another area where I have been able to have a personal influence has been the ongoing use of St Anne’s House, an old council building which has been empty for many years. The council had been proposing to re-develop the entire site for housing or to sell it off, but I was approached by community organisation Bricks with a radical proposal to use the building as a community hub instead.

Having stood on a promise of trying to bring more community buildings to the area, this was music to my ears. I managed to set up a series of meetings with officers and with Bricks to enable a temporary use of the building for 18 months, and this has proved so successful that we are now looking to see if a long-term Community Asset Transfer would be possible.

The council still want to see some housing on the site (we have an ongoing housing crisis to solve), and so Bricks have worked with architects to come up with proposals to both keep the community use and add some new affordable housing.

There is still a way to go with negotiations on this, but again it is very unlikely that this would have happened without my intervention as the local councillor.

There are many other ways in which Katja and I are trying to help our local communities – too many to mention here – but the point I am making is that there is more to being a local councillor than just taking part in votes at full council and sitting through three-hour scrutiny meetings.

It can of course be very a frustrating experience too – everyone always wants their opinions listened to and taken on board – but I think it is worth remembering that we are elected to represent an area, but not to single-handedly sort out all of its problems or suggest all the solutions.

Tim Rippington is a councillor for Brislington East.

Tim Rippington – photo: Labour Party

Main photo: Bristol City Council

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