“It’s over to you – Government has never done this before”Communities minister Miatta Fahnbulleh MP visits Hartcliffe to talk to the community about the £20m Govt fundingCommunities minister Miatta Fahnbulleh MP visits Hartcliffe to talk to the community about the £20m Govt funding(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)

A Government minister came to Hartcliffe today to call on everyone in the community to overcome their cynicism, and get involved in the decisions on how to spend £20 million of Government investment over the next ten years. Community leaders and councillors joined that appeal, and urged people to attend a public meeting next week.

The Government’s new £5 billion ‘Pride in Place’ scheme will see 169 areas receive £2 million every year for a decade, and 11 of those areas are in the South West, including the Bournville estate in Weston-super-Mare, Twerton in Bath, two areas of Swindon and Hartcliffe in South Bristol.

So Communities Minister Miatta Fahnbulleh came to Hartcliffe and said she was there not to tell people how the money would be spent, but to tell them they had to get organised and decide for themselves how that sort of long-term investment would be best used in the community.

“Get involved. We saying ‘over to you’,” she told Bristol Live during a stop at Hartcliffe Community Centre. “This is a chance to get involved, to grip it, to decide the things that you want and fundamentally to have the money to make it happen.

“Government has never done this before at this scale like this. I think it’s a massive opportunity to prove the model right, because if we get it right here, we can do it in place after place after place,” she added.

A Pride in Place neighbourhood board is to be set up, and the minister held a round-table discussion with local councillors, organisations and community leaders to kick things off, but said everyone in Hartcliffe should get involved to make sure that the decisions aren’t ‘made for them but by them’.

“We’re bringing the community together to say: ‘What’s the place that we want? What are the changes that we want in our area? And then we give them the resources, we give them the power, we give them the agency in order to be able to respond to that,” Ms Fahnbulleh said.

“People often feel that change is brought in from the outside, that projects are chosen by people outside the community,” she added. “At the heart of this, is the community coming together as a neighbourhood board, as leaders in our community, the people who are the bread and butter of the community, the ones that will know all the neighbours, coming together and saying, what do we want?

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“And that conversation is really important. And then they decide, and then they make that investment, not just for one year, not for two years, but for over a ten-year period. And that, if we get it right, is an absolute game changer,” she added.

“We’re trying to reach out to the community to ask who wants to get involved. And if we do that well, it’s not just the people who’ve always been involved, but reaching out into parts of the community for people who, candidly, they don’t believe that things will change.

“They’re quite cynical and sceptical about institutions and sceptical about politics. And actually, they’re the ones that we need around the table so that they can tell us: ‘This is what we want to see in this area, this is what’s working’. The scope is broad, and it is essentially economic, social assets that will improve the wellbeing of the area.

Communities minister Miatta Fahnbulleh MP visits Hartcliffe to talk to the community about the £20m Govt fundingCommunities minister Miatta Fahnbulleh MP visits Hartcliffe to talk to the community about the £20m Govt funding(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)

“So it will be anything like community buildings, some areas might decide that actually, you know, there’s a local social enterprise that they want to build up and set up, some areas might decide that they want to fix up their high streets.

“It’s for the community to decide. So we’ve set the scope really, really broad, because we want to create the space for people to figure out what works in our area, and then to be able to invest in that,” she added.

One of those championing more community involvement is local city councillor Kerry Bailes, who is Hartcliffe born-and-bred. She’s been involved in a community survey that has taken a year, and got the views of more than 800 local residents, which are to be presented at a drop-in day at Merchants Academy next Saturday, October 18, between 10.45am and 4pm.

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“I really hope this will make some actual different in the community, but it has to come from the ground up,” she said. “We need proper local decision making, so we need as many people as possible to get involved.

“The fact that more than 800 people took part in this survey shows how much people care about the community,” she added.

Cllr Kerry Bailes (Lab, Hartcliffe & Withywood) has been heavily involved in a community survey on what is needed to improve Hartcliffe, which will be presented in October 2025. She is pictured here at the launch of the Pride In Place project which will decide how to invest £20m of Government money in Hartcliffe over the next ten yearsCllr Kerry Bailes (Lab, Hartcliffe & Withywood) has been heavily involved in a community survey on what is needed to improve Hartcliffe, which will be presented in October 2025. She is pictured here at the launch of the Pride In Place project which will decide how to invest £20m of Government money in Hartcliffe over the next ten years(Image: Bristol Post)

The area covered by the Pride in Place grant includes areas of Hartcliffe that are in the Hengrove and Whitchurch Park ward, represented by Lib Dem councillors Tim Kent and Sarah Classick, who were both part of the minister’s round table too.

“Success at the end of this will look like something that means the people of Hartcliffe are able to access all the opportunities, for jobs and education, that everyone else in Bristol can,” said Cllr Kent.

“It’s got to be the case that this happens with the people in the community, rather than to them. It’s got to be a very collaborative process,” added Cllr Classick.

Ali Dale, the CEO of Heart of BS13 Community, a charity that runs the city farm and other projects around Hartcliffe, said he hoped that when the ten years of £2 million a year is over, it’s only the start of something. “I hope in 2035 we’re talking about a community that feels the money has been spent on the things they wanted it spent on.

“Lots of South Bristol feels left behind at points and I think it’s an opportunity to say ‘we’re here, we’ve got loads of ideas, the community is really strong, give us the money and we’ll make something happen with it,” he added.

Communities minister Miatta Fahnbulleh MP visits Hartcliffe to talk to the community about the £20m Govt fundingCommunities minister Miatta Fahnbulleh MP visits Hartcliffe to talk to the community about the £20m Govt funding(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)

“I hope that it improves the quality of life for people, but that could be parks, that could be spaces to meet, community connections, that could be education, opportunities, employment, there’s all sorts of things it could be.

“I think there’s a risk that the money sounds like a big sum, but spread it over ten years and then pick all these broad topics and is it really going to make a difference? There’s a risk in there, but I think that the community has to make the decision on where the focus is,” he added.