Battle lines drawn over future of Bristol youth club that famously hosted Prince Philip

“We clearly have a very passionate community with the will and the drive to make it happen here”Some of the Newquay Road Residents Association at Eagle House, as the debate over the future of the former Eagle House Youth Club develops(Image: Bristol Post)

A ‘passionate’ community in Knowle West has called on Bristol City Council’s officers to work with them to save a former youth club and return it back into the hands of the people who live around there. But the battle over what happens next to the old Eagle House youth club is becoming a political football, with arguments not just about what happens next, but also about what happened ten years ago, two years ago and last month.

A petition has been launched, meetings arranged and there are fears that the council officers in charge of the community buildings in places like Knowle West are eyeing up housing development opportunities rather than doing what the local people say they want.

Torrential rain this week couldn’t dampen the fiery drive for action outside the old Eagle House Youth Club, which has become something of a hot potato which could be the next big battle of 2026 at City Hall. The row goes to the very heart of many of the issues that spark debate across Bristol – the Greens versus Labour, community against the council and even councillors against council officers, with questions being asked about who really is in charge at City Hall?

The youth club was opened on Newquay Road way back in the 1950s, when this part of the vast Knowle West estate was built. It was always popular in an area which never had much in the way of facilities and things to do.

It’s a building that sits on the same site as Eagle House itself, a social club and community centre which is at the heart of life in the Newquay Road area of Knowle West.

When the Queen and Prince Philip visited Bristol back in 1959, the Duke of Edinburgh famously visited Eagle House Youth Club as part of the day many in the community still remember. But austerity hit places like Knowle West first at the start of the 2010s. Eagle House Youth Club was closed, despite a vociferous campaign to save it, in 2014.

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at Eagle House Youth Club, Bristol. 29th October 1959.

Two years later, in 2016, a controversial African evangelical church signed a ten-year lease with the city council to take over the building, while the local residents kept the social club next door.

In May next year, that lease is up and the council has confirmed it will not be renewed. What will happen to the building then is now the subject of much debate. The building has been left in such a poor state that a council report found it would require £280,000 of repairs and refurbishment just to get it up to the basic standards required to lease it out again, and probably much more to adapt it for any major change of use.

Earlier this month, Eagle House Youth Club sparked controversy at City Hall, with Labour announced the Green-led council was going to ‘let it become derelict’. There is, as yet, no agreed plan, but at Eagle House on Friday, councillors, police and local residents, told Bristol Live there needs to be something sorted very soon.

“It’s really important that we retain and support youth provision, interventions and engagement and work with young people,” said temporary Chief Inspector Rich Fear, the man in charge of policing this area of South Bristol. “They want local facilities and the opportunities to get together.

“A lot of the work we do is about youth intervention, breaking down those barriers in society, and giving young people chances. Things like local youth clubs and facilities are really really important and pivotal in growing the community. Here, there’s a terrific support network and for me it’s about providing a range of things, giving young people options so that there’s the right facilities in the right places,” he added.

The Newquay Road area has a very well organised residents association, residents who demand the attention of the authorities, inviting them for regular meetings, and not being backward in telling them what needs to happen.

Eagle House social club on the left, and the former Eagle House Youth Club on the right, on Newquay Road in Knowle West(Image: Bristol Post)

The road itself is also the ward boundary. On the east side is the Knowle ward, which has two Green Party councillors, and on the west side – which includes, just, Eagle House and the old Youth Club, is Filwood, where two Labour councillors are sent to City Hall.

Carol Casey, one of the organisers of the Newquay Road Residents Association, says the councillors on both sides of the road work hard and listen, but it’s the senior council officers who don’t seem to care or act on behalf of the residents.

Residents also say they find it hard to talk about the future for this area, without the grievances from past closures, reports, emails, announcements and broken promises from council officers and politicians on all sides – there’s a huge trust gap.

But also, in Knowle West, there’s a huge DIY culture. This is a community that has been neglected for so long – decades – that generations of people have grown up knowing that if the community needs or wants something, they have to do it themselves, no one is going to come and do it for them.

“We’ve already got radiators stored ready to get in there, we’ve got carpenters, electricians, heating people, all ready to go in there and sort it out – and it’ll probably be for a fraction of what the council say it will cost,” said one local resident. “We just need the keys, basically.”

Carol Casey said she and a group of residents have prepared a detailed proposal on how it will be used by the residents’ group. “We were up till three or four in the morning for ages working on this. It’s ready to go, we know what we will do with it, we just don’t want to see it left empty and us locked outside,” she said.

The former Eagle House Youth Club(Image: Bristol Post)

“The council are saying it will cost too much to repair it,” said Carol. “We’d like to see it come back to the community. We have our own plans, we’ve been proposing this for seven years.

“We need a community hub, somewhere that has a lot of different uses. We would have youth work six days a week, during the day there’d be loads of different things – a forest school, alternative provision for children not in school, I’d like to see the council have a room in there to deal with council inquiries, so people don’t have to go all the way down into town to see someone.

“The idea that the building could be demolished and rebuilt? The residents who have been around this area for years know that will cost an absolute fortune, this was the old coal yard, the land is really contaminated, it’s not going to happen,” she added.

Cllr Rob Logan and Cllr Lisa Durston, (Lab, Filwood) outside the former Eagle House Youth Club in Knowle West.(Image: Bristol Labour)

Cllr Rob Logan, on the Filwood Labour side, said it was clear what needs to happen. “The £280,000 the council report said would be needed just to get the building usable again is actually a tiny amount compared to the council’s overall capital budget,” he said.

“They could spend that and more, and send the bill to the church because one of the requirements of their lease was that they return it in the same condition as at the start of their lease.

“I thought this report would be a Trojan Horse, that it would be terrible and say the building was beyond saving, and would have to be demolished, but it didn’t – it was not a surprise and gave a realistic assessment of what needed to be done.

“The most important thing in all of this is that the social club here is saved,” he said, looking around the social club which has a pop art portrait of local lad Tricky proudly gazing down at the residents.

“The lease on this place ended some years ago and is being let by the council on an ad hoc basis, so we need a plan for both buildings. That building, the old youth club, should be in the control of the community – it needs to be a community hub – and the council should do the work required to get it up to standard, and at the same time work with the community on what happens to it next.

Some of the Newquay Road Residents Association at Eagle House, as the debate over the future of the former Eagle House Youth Club next door develops(Image: Bristol Post)

“The worst thing in the world would be if it is left empty, because that will attract crime, it will be vandalised, and probably destroyed in the end. This has to be sorted quickly,” he urged.

Sitting next to him is Cllr Toby Wells, a new Green Party councillor elected last year for the area on the other side of the road. With the Greens now in charge, he’s the one in the firing line as the angry residents around him demand something is sorted.

“I absolutely agree about the need for youth provision. We have the new 224 South Bristol Youth Zone but we clearly have a very passionate community with the will and the drive to make it happen here,” he said.

“My concern is the building itself needs a lot of work just to be in a position to be used again. The building could be handed to the community, but what I wouldn’t want to see is a community asset transfer that then actually becomes a community liability transfer, and the community is left with a building that is expensive to run and maintain and needs more work every so often,” he added.

The council plan mooted for years has been to redevelop either the youth club side or both the youth club and the social club, build new homes here and include in that a large modern community hub with the kind of facilities the community themselves want to see. When the council announced that an officer would come to talk to residents later this year, it was noted the person coming was from the housing department.

Cllr Toby Wells (Green, Knowle) is a Bristol city councillor who is also on the WECA scrutiny committee(Image: BCC)

Cllr Wells said there was a blank sheet of paper, but people should think about the future more broadly. “We’re trying to work with the community and we need to talk about the bigger picture – is it the right building for what the community wants to see there, do we use the building in the right way? Is the idea is to do some kind of development but one which is led by the community and includes the kind of community facilities that people want,” he added.

“But there’s no specific plans at the moment, but it’s a conversation we need to have. The council is going to engage with the community, it’s just been really frustrating that it’s taken too long to happen.

“What do we want the outcome to be at the end? What I don’t want to see happen is the community to be left with needing to find money to get the building back to where it should be,” he added.

What has ratcheted up the temperature was Bristol’s Labour Group announcing to Knowle West that the Green-led council were intending on doing nothing, and just leaving the old Youth Club empty.

“To add insult to injury, council chiefs believe the cost of even demolishing it is too expensive to justify – meaning the building will become empty and, eventually, derelict,” said a Labour press release recently. “Local councillors question whether this approach to community assets would be deemed acceptable in Green-held wards like Clifton or Cotham.”

“The series of u-turns over the Former Eagle House Youth Club is appalling,” Cllr Logan and his Filwood Labour fellow councillor Lisa Durston said. “The Green Party promised to return to the building to the community, published a plan to demolish it, and then denied those plans existed.

“As it turns out, they are dropping the plans to demolish it, but they’re not giving it back to the community – they’re going to let it sit empty. An eyesore, of use to no one, and a potential magnet for antisocial behaviour. Green Party councillors wouldn’t accept this in Clifton, so they shouldn’t expect Filwood residents to put up with it either,” they added.

The Greens retaliated, denying this was the case, and insisting there was a plan for Eagle House Youth Club, it just hasn’t been put together yet.

“Labour continues to mislead residents about the future of Eagle House,” a Green Party spokesperson retorted. “The current tenant of the former Youth Centre will be vacating the premises by May 2026, when their lease expires. As Labour are well aware, there are, unfortunately, no legal grounds to terminate the lease of the current tenant early without potentially leading to a drawn-out and expensive legal process.

“Following this, a detailed survey has identified works of at least £280,000 are required to get the building up to the minimum standard to lease out to a new occupier. Whilst these works would allow it to be used safely for a little longer, they would not bring the building up to modern standards. For that reason, the council doesn’t believe that they represent good use of public funds and does not want to put the burden of a liability – a building that may require continued, expensive works – onto the local community.

“The Council is therefore exploring options for the future of the site and will be engaging with the community. The local ward councillors have been asked their preferences for engaging with the wider local community to help shape any proposals for the future of the site, and officers have confirmed their commitment to attending local community group meetings, and a wider event. Local voices will be at the heart of any decisions made,” they added.

The women sitting with the portrait of Tricky in the Social Club next door say they aren’t prepared to wait and see what the council does next, and aren’t prepared to let the building sit empty from May next year. “The council needs to pull its finger out,” one resident told Bristol Live. “They can draw up plans, but we’ve got them already. We do not want to sit here and watch this community building sit empty, it’s ours and we want it back,” she added.

Battle lines drawn over future of Bristol youth club that famously hosted Prince Philip

Tags: