‘It is for members to outline reasons for refusal’
15:57, 19 May 2026
150 residents gathered at Victory Park adjacent to Brislington Meadows in February (Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach Plc)
Councillors who want to refuse permission for Bristol’s most controversial housing development plan are set on a collision course with their own planning officers this week.
Councillors on the planning committee last month said they wanted to refuse permission for 260 new homes on the Brislington Meadows site in South Bristol, and told their council planning officers to come back with the proper ‘defendable’ reasons they could give.
But councillors will meet again this week and not only be told they are going to have to give the plan from Keepmoat Homes permission, but that it’s not for the council’s officers to come up with reasons to refuse it.
In a strongly-worded report from the council’s planning officers, elected councillors have been told the things they were concerned about – the impact of the development on biodiversity and wildlife, and the developer’s plans to mitigate that – were not something that could stop the entire plan.
“The report addresses these issues…” the planning officers said. “Whilst other issues were discussed at the meeting, it is for members to outline reasons for refusal that they wish officers to provide advice on. For clarity, officers do not consider there to be defensible objections on other matters,” they added.
The controversial plan has been a saga ever since the last elected Mayor Marvin Rees persuaded the Government land agency Homes England to spend £15 million to buy the land in 2020 so that it could be developed for housing, only to change his mind just before the 2021 election, telling voters it would never be built on.
READ MORE: Major housing development left in limbo after row over destroying wildlife habitats
Having spent £15m, Homes England pressed on, and in 2023 the agency won outline planning permission on appeal, establishing the principle that the fields between Broomhill and an industrial estate in Brislington can have hundreds of homes built on them.
Now, Homes England’s chosen developer Keepmoat has returned with a detailed plan for the new housing development, and councillors have twice this year deferred the application, challenging the developers and the council officers who have been recommending it be given permission, on a number of issues around the ‘biodiversity net gain’, and the impact building homes would have on the wildlife.
Mayor Marvin Rees announced plans not to develop on the contested Brislington Meadows patch in Bristol in April 2021
From left: Tim Rippington (cllr for Brislington East), Kerry McCarthy (MP for Bristol East), Mayor Marvin Rees and Katja Hornchen (candidate for Brislington East).(Image: James Beck/BristolLive)
But the council officers have told councillors that issues around ecology are something that were dealt with when the site was originally granted permission three years ago by a Government planning inspector.
Brislington Meadows is a renowned wildlife habitat – it was one of the sites in Bristol identified five years ago by Avon Wildlife Trust as an important site when they put together the council’s response to the city’s ‘ecological emergency’.
That prompted Marvin Rees’ infamous pre-election U-turn, but Natural England, Homes England – the Government owners of the site – and then the Government’s planning inspectors disagreed.
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Local residents and environmentalists across the city have been fighting for years with a ‘Save Brislington Meadows’ campaign, and will be out in force again at City Hall when the application is discussed on Wednesday evening.
Last month, after it was deferred for a second time, Keepmoat Homes submitted an entirely new application to detail where and how they intend to build 260 homes on the fields.
Artists impression images showing what the Brislington Meadows proposed development will look like. Keepmoat Homes plan 260 new homes on the land in South Bristol(Image: Keepmoat)
The Brislington Meadows application report this week is the latest example of an increasingly controversial back-and-forth between councillors wanting reasons to refuse planning applications and planning officers telling them they can’t.
Already this year, similar rows have developed over plans for South Bristol’s tallest-ever building – a 23-storey block of student flats next to Victoria Park in Bedminster, which councillors initially refused but were then warned that would risk losing an appeal, with a hotly-disputed claim from council planning chiefs that this would cost taxpayers £1 million.