The incident happened in the Blaise Castle estate in north west Bristol, which is part of the city council\u2019s parks and estates. It was filmed by former city councillor Siobhan Kennedy-Hall<\/a>, who runs a dog walking, doggy day care, and transport business called Paw2Door in north Bristol.<\/p>\n She was walking her own and two other dogs through the Blaise estate when she heard a motorbike approaching. \u201cI had my dog and two others with me,\u201d she said. \u201cI 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\u2019t have got a bike through it. Then it all went quiet, so I decided to go down to the Trym,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Siobhan started filming when she first saw the bike approach. \u201cI got down there and I immediately hear this bike with two children coming towards me, swearing at me: \u2018get your f***ing dogs out of the way\u2019. Excuse my language but they were still threatening me as they went past,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cI ended up in the stream, shaking, because I thought \u2018well, they are not going to put their bike in the stream\u2019. I got all the dogs in the stream with me as well,\u201d she told Bristol Live.<\/p>\n \u201cThis 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\u2019s not us dog carers and dog walkers that are the problem, it really isn\u2019t. I\u2019m just fed up with it.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Backlash to ‘extortionate’ Bristol parks fees as one dog walker says she faces \u00a320K bill<\/a>READ MORE: Dog walkers and personal trainers will be charged to use Bristol’s parks – and public will have no say<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe council are still trying to bill us for using these spaces, which aren\u2019t even safe for dog walkers,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n The incident happened on Thursday last week, less than two days after council chiefs confirmed they were pressing ahead with plans to charge people<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Back then, Siobhan was one of many dog walkers who voiced their outrage at the proposal<\/a>, 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 \u00a320,000 or more every year.<\/p>\n In the face of such backlash in September<\/a>, the plans were ‘paused’ but now, councillors at the meeting said it would go ahead<\/a>, but the fees could be lower than first planned.<\/p>\n Lib Dem committee chair Stephen Williams said \u201cI expect we\u2019ll be able to make a decision well in advance of budget full council in February. The activities we\u2019re trying to regulate, licence and charge a fee to cover that, are commercial activities by businesses.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019re 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\u2019t really know the full extent of what was taking place in our parks. Now we have a better picture and I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll have a much better scheme matching that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n A \u201cdiscovery phase\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Conservative Cllr Mark Weston said: \u201cIt\u2019s the public that use these services, that use the dog walkers and sports clubs and everything else. So it\u2019ll have an impact on them. The sums raised will be insignificant in relation to the budget \u2014 so is the pain worth it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“The council are going to make me pay for this when they can’t even make it safe” 15:31,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,3893,10648,748,188,393,728,4884,11518,50608,285,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-561917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-bristol-city-council","10":"tag-bristol-live","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-crime","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-environment","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-liberal-democrats","17":"tag-north-bristol","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115526814260805657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0_TCBR101125DogsBRIJPG.jpg\")
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)<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0_Stephen-Williams-Desk.jpg\")
Former Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams(Image: Copyright Unknown)<\/p>\n