A series of major planning decisions made by councillors in 2024 will change the face of Bristol forever – including two new 28-storey tower blocks just yards away from each other which will compete for the title of the city’s tallest building when completed.
In South Gloucestershire, a committee approved a massive increase in the number of new homes to be built at the former Filton Airfield – a total of 6,500 properties, more than double the original amount – next to where a new arena is being created at the historic Brabazon Hangars on the edge of Bristol.
The saga of the city’s last working farm, Yew Tree Farm, rumbled on amid a huge row over plans to expand South Bristol cemetery onto wildlife-rich land.
Hundreds of flats at various sites were granted permission, including opposite Temple Meads station, and hundreds more refused.
An underground river hidden under industrial areas in Bedminster will be opened up, and new council homes at the Floating Harbour got the green light, only for the new Green-led administration to pull the plug on the council housing element.
Consultation was launched, yet again, into how the Cumberland Basin should be reimagined as a development called Western Harbour.
And one of the quirkiest planning applications revealed fears that gorillas still living on their island at the former Bristol Zoo could escape if a dead tree was not felled urgently, the concern being that it could either form a makeshift bridge over the moat or knock out the electric fencing keeping them in.
Here are 12 of the year’s biggest planning decisions.
Giant high rises to replace Premier Inn
The enormous hotel next to the Bearpit is currently being demolished after councillors approved plans in March to replace it with a 28-storey building of student flats and an 18-storey block with co-living apartments.
The height of the tallest tower was especially controversial with many people lodging objections because it will stand next to a Grade I-listed church.
The 132 co-living rooms, which the developers are currently requesting to increase to 150, were also contentious because they will be tiny, with residents sharing spaces such as kitchens, living rooms and communal areas.
The 28-storey block will have more than 400 student bedrooms.
Bristol City Council development control committee also gave the go-ahead for a related but separate application to knock down the Rupert Street NPC car park and replace it with a new one, along with 328 student beds and 249 co-living studios in a building up to 20 storeys.
In October it emerged that World War II bomb experts will be brought in to oversee the Premier Inn’s demolition because of an “elevated medium risk” of the discovery of unexploded devices from German aircraft and Allied anti-aircraft artillery at the site.
Huge block of apartments to replace Debenhams
A month after councillors voted in favour of the plans to replace the Premier Inn, the committee granted consent for another 28-storey building just down the road to replace the former Debenhams in Broadmead.
The department store had been vacant for three years and will make way for 502 flats, of which 100 will be classed as “affordable”.
More than 100 people objected to the redevelopment, mostly because of the height of the tallest block.
The proposals included creating a new street connecting the Bearpit to the Horsefair through the site, with shops, cafes, restaurants and bars on the ground floor.
YTL’s Brabazon neighbourhood
In February, South Gloucestershire councillors approved a massive expansion of the proposed new neighbourhood being built along with a new 19,000-seat arena on the former Filton Airfield.
YTL Developments originally had permission for 2.675 homes at the Brabazon development, but in a “historic decision” this was increased to 6,500, with more than 1,700 “affordable”.
The plans include new schools, offices, hotels, a research campus, student accommodation, cafes, restaurants, community buildings, health and sports facilities, and laboratories.
Construction work on some of the new homes will not be allowed until the developers can prove public transport has been improved.
A new railway station is planned nearby, but changes are also needed to three motorway junctions on the M5 and M32.
In August, the strategic sites delivery committee agreed to a six-month delay so that talks on the required improvements could continue between YTL and National Highways, which has so far maintained its holding objection.
The government body needs to be satisfied with alterations to junctions 16 and 17 of the M5 and junction one of the M32.
Yew Tree Farm
A planning decision made in November 2023 still had major ramifications throughout the following year.
At the time, development control committee members voted by 5-3 in favour of expanding South Bristol Cemetery onto protected meadows used for grazing by the city’s last working farm, Yew Tree Farm, in Bedminster Down.
Some of the wildlife-rich fields, farmed by Catherine Withers, are a Site of Nature Conservation Interest (SNCI).
A decades-long campaign against various threats to its future because of proposed development reached a crescendo in 2024
In October, the council’s public health and communities policy committee reached a compromise that would see the cemetery expansion go ahead but on a reduced scale, with drainage plans involving a storm overflow pond being reviewed and potentially changed to be less damaging to the environment, including fears of pollution to Colliter’s Brook.
New burial plots would now avoid the SNCI and there would be just 870 in total, just over half of the original 1,550 proposed graves.
Ms Withers said she was still sceptical about the compromise which was offered to her back in May, which she told the council then that it was not acceptable.
Goram Homes sites pulled from council housing plan
Yew Tree Farm wasn’t the only planning decision that took an unexpected twist in the autumn.
In September, homes and housing delivery policy committee chairman Cllr Barry Parsons (Green, Easton) announced at the meeting that the local authority was suddenly pulling out of two major projects and would no longer be buying new homes being built by its housing company Goram Homes.
He said the bill for repairing existing council homes was too big and the organisation could now not afford it.
Cllr Parsons insisted that the properties would still be created but that the purchaser would instead be a housing association, so the social housing element of the schemes at Baltic Wharf on the Harbourside and part of the huge new Hengrove Park suburb would remain, they just wouldn’t be council homes anymore.
It was only a few months earlier, in April, that the development control committee approved the Baltic Wharf scheme for 166 flats, of which 40 per cent would be affordable, in blocks up to six storeys, despite concerns about flooding.
Opposition Labour councillors challenged the controversial decision to remove the two sites from the council’s housing pipeline by taking it to an escalation panel in October in the hope of a re-think.
But this was rejected by 4-3 votes along party lines, with the Greens and Conservatives voting to take no further action and Labour and Lib Dems saying it should go to the policy committee for a debate and a decision in public, which had not happened.
Hundreds of flats at former car dealership near Temple Meads
Proposals for 435 rental flats in buildings up to 15 storeys opposite Temple Meads station were granted permission in September.
The planning committee unanimously approved the redevelopment of the former Robins & Day Peugeot dealership next to the Bath Road Bridge roundabout.
It followed two years of negotiations between the council and developers Dandara over the height of the blocks and the number of affordable homes, with a condition guaranteeing 43 of the apartments would be let out at social rent rates to people on the housing waiting list.
Commercial units will be created on the ground floor of the site on the corner of Clarence Road and Temple Way, along with improved pedestrian and cycle routes, landscaping and play areas.
Unusually for such a major application, there were only five objections, including from Bristol Civic Society because of harm to heritage assets.
Hundreds of student flats in Bedminster
A total of 484 student beds in three blocks up to 10 storeys on the former Pring and St Hill site in Malago Road, Bedminster, were given the green light in June.
Neighbours objected about the buildings’ heights which will block views from nearby houses on Windmill Hill.
The site was vacant but most recently occupied by a car wash and a charity providing temporary housing for homeless people.
An engineering works and foundry operated there until 2003 and was demolished in 2009.
Hundreds of other student flats are being built in the area as part of the Bedminster Green regeneration.
It was the third time the developers had sought planning consent, having been refused twice previously, so they made changes to the designs, including reducing the number of buildings from four to three and increasing recreation space.
Plans for more than 700 student beds refused
One of the biggest schemes to be rejected by city councillors in 2024 was 705 student beds in an industrial area despite the backing of the local community.
The proposals included a new community centre and supermarket, which the Dings lacked.
Members refused permission for the eight-storey building on Sussex Street in St Philips in June, saying the area should be protected for industrial uses and that the living conditions would have been poor for the students.
The site was home to industrial units including one used by the Invisible Circus which would have had to relocate.
Opening up underground river
Councillors approved plans to open up an underground river in South Bristol despite objections about the loss of trees to make way for a new amphitheatre seating area, which will also help prevent floods from the River Malago.
The decision in June came after the development control committee heard the project would improve the flow of the water in three places in Bedminster where it mostly ran underground.
Planning officers told the meeting that the restoration formed an integral part of the wider Bedminster Green regeneration.
The Malago has been hidden under industrial sites for more than a century.
It will be dug out and rerouted in a new channel from the railway line at the bottom of Windmill Hill, almost to Bedminster Parade.
Critics branded the idea a “concrete ditch for flood relief”.
South Bristol community centre revamp
The city council granted planning consent for a £10million transformation of one of South Bristol’s most important buildings in October.
It means the redevelopment of Filwood Community Centre, including a retrofit and expansion of the existing building in the corner of Knowle West, will begin in January.
The scheme will provide 75 per cent more floor space in the community hub, with a public living room and an area for Filwood Library, which will remain on the Broadway until the work is completed in about a year.
The fabric of the building will also undergo significant improvements to improve energy efficiency.
The work is being funded by a grant from the government, which awarded Bristol City Council £14million for wider regeneration projects in Filwood.
Rhubarb Tavern
It wasn’t the biggest planning application of the year in terms of size, but proposals for six new flats in the beer garden of the last pub in a Bristol neighbourhood proved one of the most controversial.
Councillors granted consent for the development at the Rhubarb Tavern in Barton Hill in July despite huge opposition from campaigners.
The owner of the pub, which had been shut for four years and vandalised, promised to repair and reopen it, paying for this with the money earned from the apartments.
Opponents, including the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), said the decision would instead seal its doom.
A condition of permission was that the pub must be fully repaired and available for a new landlord within 12 months of the flats being built.
Back in January, the committee voted against officers’ advice to give the go ahead to previous proposals which included the six homes in the garden and another two above the pub, which councillors feared would prevent a new licensee moving in.
The decision in July was a major blow to two Barton Hill musicians who crowdfunded £35,000 to take over the pub but had to give back the money to donors because of time constraints on how long the website could hold the cash for.
Western Harbour
It seems that every time we have an annual round-up of the year’s most important planning decisions, Western Harbour is lurking somewhere in the background, seemingly no closer to reality than 12 months earlier.
Previous incarnations of what could replace the twisting flyovers of Cumberland Basin and land near the New Cut were all abandoned.
But in October, Bristol City Council re-launched its consultation from scratch for the fourth time in about six years.
This time it was different, though. There were no set plans, nothing concrete for people to comment on, it was a series of “What if…?” questions for residents to make suggestions.
The only certainty is that something will definitely happen, not least because of the perilous state of the ageing A370 bridges and road infrastructure.
Or, at least, that's what everyone has been told again…
