“The council are going to make me pay for this when they can’t even make it safe”
15:31, 10 Nov 2025Updated 17:16, 10 Nov 2025
This is the moment a terrified dog walker took refuge in the middle of a river with her dogs as two masked teenagers illegally rode a motorbike through a Bristol park. Now the professional dog walker involved said it was an outrage that Bristol City Council is pressing ahead with plans to charge people like her to use the city’s parks – when they can’t keep them safe.
The incident happened in the Blaise Castle estate in north west Bristol, which is part of the city council’s parks and estates. It was filmed by former city councillor Siobhan Kennedy-Hall, who runs a dog walking, doggy day care, and transport business called Paw2Door in north Bristol.
She was walking her own and two other dogs through the Blaise estate when she heard a motorbike approaching. “I had my dog and two others with me,” she said. “I deliberately avoided it as much as I could. I could hear it going backwards and forwards, and I was right in the depths of the woods, you couldn’t have got a bike through it. Then it all went quiet, so I decided to go down to the Trym,” she added.
Siobhan started filming when she first saw the bike approach. “I got down there and I immediately hear this bike with two children coming towards me, swearing at me: ‘get your f***ing dogs out of the way’. Excuse my language but they were still threatening me as they went past,” she added.
The video shows the bike being ridden along the narrow path, narrowly avoiding the dogs and Siobhan. She shouted back at them and they stopped around a corner. The video shows a visibly upset Siobhan, fearing they were coming back after she shouted at them, making an instant decision to go and stand in the river and call her dogs into the water too. “I ended up in the stream, shaking, because I thought ‘well, they are not going to put their bike in the stream’. I got all the dogs in the stream with me as well,” she told Bristol Live.
“This is what Bristol City Council parks and amenities think that I am going to give them money for, to be able to be threatened by youngsters in their park. It’s not us dog carers and dog walkers that are the problem, it really isn’t. I’m just fed up with it.
READ MORE: Backlash to ‘extortionate’ Bristol parks fees as one dog walker says she faces £20K billREAD MORE: Dog walkers and personal trainers will be charged to use Bristol’s parks – and public will have no say
“The council are still trying to bill us for using these spaces, which aren’t even safe for dog walkers,” she added.
The incident happened on Thursday last week, less than two days after council chiefs confirmed they were pressing ahead with plans to charge people who run businesses and use the parks for those businesses, money to use them. A final decision on exactly how much fitness instructors, dog walkers and other people would be charged is yet to be made, but at a committee meeting last Tuesday, Cllr Stephen Williams, the chair of the public health and communities committee, said they were going ahead with the idea, despite a huge backlash when it was first mooted in September.
Back then, Siobhan was one of many dog walkers who voiced their outrage at the proposal, in particular the plans to make dog walkers who use multiple parks over the course of a week or month be charged per person and per park. Such a policy could mean people who work as dog walkers end up having to pay £20,000 or more every year.
The moment a motobike being ridden by two teenagers, illegally, on the Blaise estate in north Bristol, approaches dogs being walked by Siobhan Kennedy-Hall. She had to take refuge with her dogs in the nearby Trym river to stay out of the way of the bikers(Image: Siobhan Kennedy-Hall)
In the face of such backlash in September, the plans were ‘paused’ but now, councillors at the meeting said it would go ahead, but the fees could be lower than first planned.
Lib Dem committee chair Stephen Williams said “I expect we’ll be able to make a decision well in advance of budget full council in February. The activities we’re trying to regulate, licence and charge a fee to cover that, are commercial activities by businesses.
“They’re not activities by members of the public in general. Obviously there will be an effect on the customers of those businesses. But they are specifically about the activities of commercial operators in our parks. We opened applications for a licence a few months ago, received some harsh feedback from operators and political colleagues, and paused it.
“But we’re still analysing the information that came in, which has been incredibly useful and enables us to design a scheme that better fits what we think are the activities taking place in our parks. The truth is we didn’t really know the full extent of what was taking place in our parks. Now we have a better picture and I’m sure we’ll have a much better scheme matching that,” he added.
The original fee structure was benchmarked against licences in other council areas. This quickly prompted a backlash with dog walkers complaining the fees could put them out of business. Staff are now reviewing the impact on small businesses, and might change the fee structure.
Former Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams(Image: Copyright Unknown)
A “discovery phase” will last until the end of November, while the council collects information to assess the impact of new fees. After November, the application form will stay open for new businesses to apply for a licence. Changes to the fees will be announced early next year.
Conservative Cllr Mark Weston said: “It’s the public that use these services, that use the dog walkers and sports clubs and everything else. So it’ll have an impact on them. The sums raised will be insignificant in relation to the budget — so is the pain worth it?”