My Questions for the Chair of BCC's Transport and Connectivity Committee at the next Public Forum on 11th March
Feb 26, 2025
Below are the exciting questions (!) I have submitted for 11th March. The current system allows three questions per member of the public, which may be asked at the meeting itself if they are submitted early enough to be high up on the list. I have embellished my submission here somewhat and asked a couple more… Supplementary questions are also possible after the councillor has responded. I have found the practice of this new system a little unclear and we shall see what happens at this next meeting! Bristol residents, please be encouraged to send in your own questions and statements on the ‘Liveable Neighbourhood’ or any other mobility restriction schemes being introduced in the city here. And let me know if you’d like them to be published here too!
Here we go:
Bristol City Council's 'Liveable Neighbourhoods Handbook' lists policy documents that have relevance to ‘Liveable Neighbourhood’ schemes. These include ‘Gear Change – A Bold Vision for Cycling and Walking’, a document created under Boris Johnson’s Conservative government in 2020 and in which it is stated that £2 billion in funding was released for measures that would transform England into ‘a great walking and cycling nation’. ‘The new cycling budget is the largest sum ever committed to active travel in this country’, in order to ‘put cycling at the heart of transport policy…the great majority of which will be channelled through local authorities’. But the funding is only for schemes that meet ‘the new standards’, which include making ‘cycle, bus and walking corridors’ and ‘closing a limited number of main roads to through traffic except for buses and access.’ Further, ‘funding will be conditional on work starting and finishing by specified dates’ - or funds may have to be returned, and ‘Active Travel England's assessment of an authority's performance on active travel will influence the funding it receives for other forms of transport’.
Can the Chair of the Transport and Connectivity Committee please confirm that funding for improving public transport infrastructure is therefore dependent on the Council first implementing ‘Liveable Neighbourhoods’, amongst other transport policies designed to force people out of cars and onto bikes?
Following on from the above, it would seem that the ‘Liveable Neighbourhood’ schemes are driven by central funding and the stipulations for its use, rather than by the actual day-to-day needs of residents, which is leading the Council to persist in ignoring the thousands of complaints and concerns being raised by local residents of East Bristol. Can you confirm that your priority as a Green Party administration is to conform to the diktats of Conservative and Labour central policy makers, using taxpayers’ money for whatever agenda they see fit, before listening to the people you are allegedly here to serve and who are being forced to pay for policies that are clearly against their best interests? If you agree with these policies, are you also making the assumption that you know better what these best interests are, and if so, on what basis are you doing this?
At the Public Forum during the full council meeting on 10th December 2024 (timestamp 00:30:00), after observing that there had been many statements both for and against the EBLN scheme, you said that this demonstrated the Merriam-Webster word of the year - ‘polarisation’ - and that you hoped we would be able to listen to one another, engage in debate and through this create public policy. Can you see that it is your and the council’s own actions and refusal to act on what you have heard from residents who do not support the EBLN scheme, whilst amplifying the voices of those who are for it, that is actually causing polarisation in East Bristol at the moment?
I would be grateful for an honest response to my questions that does not include any of the formulaic text that is normally repeated robotically when this agenda to restrict mobility is criticised. Many thanks.
