Bristol City Council has set up a parks money-making taskforceA general image of a Bristol park(Image: Bristol Live)

Council leaders promised not to build a “Universal Studios theme park” at any of Bristol’s parks as they launched a taskforce to come up with ways to make more cash from the city’s green spaces, festivals and events.

The public health and communities committee approved plans to form a cross-party group of councillors, supported by Bristol City Council officers, to brainstorm money-spinning ideas, such as advertising and sponsorship, “exciting” paid-for activities and the expansion of the authority’s Blaise Plant Nursery.

The parks service raises about £13million a year from commercial activity, rents and charges, but this still leaves it about £2million short of what it costs for the annual upkeep of the council’s 430 parks, which range from small urban green areas to large heritage estates.

Cllr Ed Fraser (Green, Eastville), who will chair the working group that will make its recommendations to the committee in November, told the meeting on Friday, May 9: “I’m really pleased to see this coming forward.

“The objective of the group is that we should be making recommendations to help get the parks department to a point where it can wash its own face financially.

“That connects a precursor to generating a surplus that can go towards some of the bigger long-term projects, things like the long-awaited need to restore Ashton Court Mansion, so we can use it to supercharge commercial income and continue the virtuous circle.

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“It would be great if we can use this task-and-finish group to get a better understanding of why several new events have recently sadly had to cancel in Bristol and what investment we can make to attract the right scale of festivals and events to the city.

“I also want to assure the public about what the group isn’t – it’s not about blatant overcommercialisation, we’re not suddenly going to be turning our green space into a Universal Studios theme park or something like that.”

He said the group would accept an offer from Bristol Parks Forum to include it in its discussions.

Cllr Fraser said: “Realistically we’re not talking about introducing events at all 430 of our parks, we don’t have capacity to do that in the first place.

“But the very idea is to provide funding that can then be reinvested across our parks and estates, not just those that happen to be capable of hosting events because of where they are or their size.

“So I’m really hopeful that the group can make some ambitious recommendations and that we can use those to develop exciting activities for Bristolians and visitors to our parks and open spaces.”

Committee chairman Cllr Stephen Williams (Lib Dem, Westbury-on-Trym & Henleaze) said the money-making ideas would include the council’s parks service and city events team, which is responsible for Bristol’s carnivals and festivals.

He said: “We bring in millions of pounds to the city every year and that money makes a vital contribution to the running of our parks and estates which broadly cost just north of £15million, but we bring in around £13million from various activities.

“While the objective of this group is not necessarily to bridge that gap or even to make a surplus, it is to look at a lot of proposals that officers already have percolating away to stress-test them in a safe place among councillors but also to come up with ideas ourselves and to receive contributions from the huge number of groups around the city who care about parks and spaces and festivals and will want to make them even more successful, in particular financially.”

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