Hand in glove

Hallelujah! The long-awaited consultation on the sale/lease of public land to property developers Squarepeg has finally begun. And when some poor PhD student decides to write the history of dishonest and sham 'community consultation' excercises, I am sure it will be top of their list of case studies.

A casual reader of the consultation website might think that this excercise was being carried out by Bristol City Council themselves. After all, we are talking about the fate of the Bristol-Bath Railway Path, which the website claims is 'an outstanding urban escape route' (whatever that may be). OK, so they did try to turn it into a bus lane not so long ago, but we're a Cycling City now, doncha know? So you'd be forgiven for thinking that listening to local views would be something they'd want to do themselves, having cocked it up so spectacularly less than a year ago.

Er...no. The eagle-eyed, prepared to click through to a PDF file and scan the small print, will notice that the consultation is in fact being run by PPS. Sounds pretty innocous? The investigative blogger's friend reveals that they are in fact, drumroll, 'the UK's... foremost supplier of lobbying, communications and consultation advice to the property industry'. Oh.

Satisfied clients include Barratt Homes, George Wimpey, and Persimmon Homes. And no wonder. As PPS's website astutely notes:

Pre-application consultation on major schemes is fast becoming a fact of life for all involved in development...[We] have enormous experience of how to make the provisions of the 2004 Planning Act work for you. Get it right and you can bring the community with you. Get it wrong and you will face heightened local concerns.

So, you may ask, how exactly can legislation be 'made to work' for multi-million pound developers? What exactly does 'getting a consultation right' involve? The Bristol-Bath Railway Path consultation isn't a bad place for a masterclass.

1. Create the appearance of democratic legitimacy by giving the impression that the consultation is being run by a public body.

2. Prejudge the issue by praising the development as 'much needed' and listing its many virtues.

3. Include pictures of the derelict factory site rather than the historic hedgerow that the development will destroy.

4. Base the consultation around spurious, quasi-rhetorical questions such as:

• Do you believe the area should remain as it is, or receive further investment?
• Is regeneration important for Easton?
• Do you believe development can co-exist alongside green spaces?
• What would you like to see happen to the two plots of land?

It is important that you ignore the fact that it is perfectly possible to answer yes to the first three and still be against the development in its present form. The object of the exercise is to blackmail residents of a deprived area into giving up scarce green space for private profit.

5. Pretend that green space in Frome Vale is relevant to residents of Easton and Lawrence Hill.

6. Ensure that the consultation period falls over Christmas and New Year, effectively giving interested parties only three weeks to respond.

This consultation is biased beyond belief in favour of the developers. Pinch yourself and remember that it's being run on behalf of the council. And we're paying for it.

No but no but yes but....

Great story over at the Bristol Blogger about the council's secret sell-off of bits of the railway path to property developers Squarepeg. The Freedom of Information documents are an object lesson for would-be property moguls. Want to get your mitts on some public land? If at first you don't succeed, try, try, and try again.

Knocked back once? Put in another request. Still foiled by pesky council officers wanting to protect an important wildlife site/keep their options open for BRT (delete as applicable)? Nil desperandum! Get a self-important red-trousered architect to go right to the top, then get your laywers to inform said hapless bureaucrats that the sale is in fact going ahead.

Sorted.

Hedge fund

There is a nice explanation of the threatened piece of railway path and why it matters here:

http://thestoryofahedge.blogspot.com/

Squarepeg in a round hole

According to the 'Transportation Assessment' submitted with Squarepeg's Chocolate Factory application, the site is 'a unique opportunity to [sic] a development that is highly sustainable in transport terms'.

In fact, Greenbank is something far from 'unique' in Bristol: a transport black hole.

Yes, the cycle path runs past the site, but many people won't use it after dark, ruling it out for winter commutes.

Local buses are poor, and Stapleton Road train station is a bracing 10-15 minutes away. To describe the Severn Beach Line trains as 'frequent' (as the 'Transportation Assessment' does) is being somewhat frugal with the truth.

Faced with these options, most people are going to drive, making a bad local traffic situation worse. Royate Hill is prone to horrible snarl ups and the M32 clogged with commuters and Ikea shoppers.

Is it too much to ask for an honest assessment, rather than the usual meaningless hype about 'unique opportunities' and 'sustainability'?

There are good arguments for developing the chocolate factory site, but Squarepeg's 'greener than thou' bullshit makes me long to hand it over to crazed Easton hippies for intensive lentil farming.

For what it's worth, I'd like to see a development which leaves the railway path well alone, is as close to carbon neutral as possible, rewards car-free living, and provides larger properties for families and flat-sharers, not sterile one-bed bolt holes.

But given this is Bristol, not Freiburg or Rotterdam, that probably ain't going to happen.

Ain't nothing going on but the rent

[Shuffles back in, looking embarrassed.]

Luckily for the state of the nation, some bloggers have actually got the hang of this regular posting lark. Chris Hutt on the Green Bristol Blog in particular has turned up some very interesting information on the Squarepeg plans for the Elizabeth Shaw Factory, including the fact that what planners designated a wildlife reserve in 2000 is now likely to be built on without so much as even an Environmental Impact Assessment.

But hark! Here's local MP Kerry McCarthy, to defend the plans: apparently Squarepeg are the thinking woman's solution to the housing crisis:

"how else would you suggest we find space for homes for the 19,000 people on the council waiting list? Obviously brownfield sites must be the priority, but it's not the entire solution. I'm also concerned about the number of houses being turned into flats, with associated problems re parking, and often anti-social behaviour from the people who rent them. We need family homes - but they've got to be built somewhere."

Kerry, Kerry, Kerry. Where to start? Have you discussed your plans to fill the development with council tenants with George Ferguson? And why the assumption that the development is going to provide 'family homes'? (An assumption which I suspect is shared by many of the development's supporters in Greenbank.) For all the prominence of the 'cycle homes' in Squarepeg's charm offensive, of the 252 planned dwellings, only 52 will have three or more bedrooms - as against 122 one-bed and 78 two-bed flats.

Let's be absolutely clear - almost 80% of the housing in this development will be nasty investment properties of the kind that have "created a buy-to-let desert and a huge waiting list for family housing in the city" (the Bristol Blogger on the same thread).

More rib-tickling creativity with the truth is to be found in the planning application's Transportation Assessment, of which more anon.