‘Low-income residents aren’t casually polluting the environment, they’re trying to survive’
Some of the measures in place during the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood trial(Image: Bristol City Council)
The council, along with various councillors of differing seniority and wards, continues to justify the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood (EBLN) scheme with inconsistent and detached reasoning.
One minute it’s about changing habits yet it’s been repeatedly said Lawrence Hill has the lowest car ownership in Bristol.
Next, it’s framed around tackling child obesity yet the ward sits with a 55% child poverty rate. It’s supposedly about clean air, but many residents are living in flats plagued by mould, damp, and expensive, outdated heating systems.
It’s about reducing single-occupancy trips, yet many households already car share. It’s common to see two or more people commuting together to warehouses, cleaning jobs, or care work.
Every journey is essential, and low-income residents can ill afford the extra fuel costs caused by detours, traffic queues, and prolonged idling.
Quality of life has deteriorated. Children travelling further for education, due to limited spaces in local schools, now wake earlier and return home later, cutting into homework time and family life.
Having lived in the ward, in a high-rise tower block for nearly a decade, currently serving as Chair of the Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum, and having personally submitted the fire service FOI, I can say with confidence none of the arguments hold up under scrutiny.
To many residents, they feel disingenuous.
Shaban Ali(Image: Bristol Post)
Low-income residents aren’t casually polluting the environment, they’re trying to survive. If the council truly wanted to help, it would prioritise housing repairs, insulation, and heating upgrades, not erect road blocks that foreseeably delay emergency services, while publicly insisting they care.
The Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum recently compiled data and published the Lawrence Hill Youth Sentiment Report. The findings are stark, though not surprising.
The key takeaway is this. Decades of institutional neglect and chronic underinvestment are no longer just issues affecting older generations. They are now being felt and deeply internalised by younger residents. This is fuelling a dangerous and growing mistrust in public institutions.
In parallel, the socio-economic conditions, high unemployment, insecure low paid work, and over-reliance on social housing and welfare are being used by the far right, who see the vacuum of opportunity and institutional failure as a rallying cry, as we saw during the last WECA elections.
But there is hope and there is opportunity. The report identifies clear areas where institutions could act now:
- Youth pathways into apprenticeships
- Business support and grant access
- Co-designed, community-led programmes
- Co-creation of an environmentally friendly, self-sustaining, multimodal community hub that fills critical gaps in local service provision
The Neighbourhood Forum stands ready to act as a bridge for genuine participation and representation, as well as the kind of transformative ambition this ward urgently needs.
These are not optional extras, they are prerequisites for any successful initiative in Lawrence Hill.
We welcome meaningful collaboration and co-design. But we also demand that any ambition for this area be rooted in respect, reality, and long-overdue investment, not just diversions, and literal dead ends that sadly reflect how many here now feel about both their daily lives and the institutions meant to serve them.