The Former St Christopher’s Site
Background
The new owner of the five acre site is a Joint Venture Partnership between Amicala and FORE Ethical Investment company. The project is being delivered by developers First Base.
Amicala plan to develop the site for “extra care development” which they describe as taking the form of a core building providing facilities for residents surrounded by purpose built specialist residential accommodation, where care and support is provided, both within the communal facilities and their own homes. The development is aimed at older people who might not need any support at all for much of the time but can access it as required. NB The planned development is NOT a care home.
The accommodation will be specifically designed to meet the changing needs of older people. For example design features will include bathrooms able to accommodate wheelchairs, the ability to install hoists if needed, lower level toilets , sinks and work surfaces and induction hobs.
The development of the St. Christopher’s site scheme will involve the retention and conversion of five lodges on Westbury Park to flats, the construction of new flats and houses on the rear land and the use of the listed Grace House as a community hub. Facilities provided on site will include a bistro, gym, pool and events space: some of these facilities will be made available to people living in the wider community.
Community Engagement July - October 2021
In Spring 2021 the Community Association agreed a programme of community engagement with the development partnership (subject to regular review) to engage immediate neighbours of the St. Christopher site and people living in the wider Westbury Park area. A number of one to one sessions with local residents and open days were held in July 2021 which enabled people to tour the site and raise potential issues of concern including access, parking and the retention of trees.
A stakeholder workshops attended by community groups, local residents and other interested parties were held on Tuesday , 21st September 2021. The developers presented for the first time sketch plans of the proposed development at stakeholder workshops on Tuesday, 2st September. The plans showed new buildings of up to six storeys high at the centre of the site and buildings of up to four storeys high close to adjoining roads. This was greeted with dismay by those present, not only residents living close to the site and most adversely affected but by almost everyone present including the Community Association.
In response to the initial draft development plans put forward by the developers the Community Association has been very active in raising awareness of the plans, working with local residents to oppose the plans and making it clear to the developers that not only are we dismayed by the initial plans but also by the community engagement process in which we had invested so much trust.
Following the developers' workshop events held on 21st September the Community Association issued a statement saying that we opposed the initial plans announced by the developers and their failure to listen to the concerns of local residents regarding the scale of development and the height of buildings. The Association also released a press statement to share our concerns about the proposals with a wider audience.
Update, Saturday 27th November
St Christophers Action Group (SCAN)
WPCA representatives Kevin Chidgey and Jeff Bishop have held meetings in recent weeks with members of a newly formed group of residents who will be most affected by the proposed development – those living in Royal Albert Road, Bayswater Avenue and The Glen area. The new group is called the St. Christopher’s Action Network (SCAN) and their objective is to secure an appropriate and sensitive development of the site. SCAN have set up a website https://www.scanbristol.org/ which invites people to become involved in their campaign to secure an acceptable development of the site.
Statement of Planning Principles
Following widespread opposition to the initial proposals presented by the developers in late September the Community Association and SCAN agreed a Statement of Planning Principles in early November. The objective of the Statement is to make clear community views on the development of the site and to influence development proposals as far we can. The principles cover conservation, design, parking, the height, scale and location of new buildings, ecology, site access and road safety.
The Latest Plans
WPCA representatives Kevin Chidgey and Jeff Bishop, along with members of the St. Christopher’s Action Group (SCAN), met senior representatives of the developers along with their architects on Tuesday (November 23rd). We were given a presentation of the latest plans and had an opportunity to ask questions and give our initial views on the new designs.
We thought the plans were an improvement on the initial plans presented in late September – a number of the proposed apartment blocks on the rear land (referred to as villas) were repositioned to relate more sympathetically to the shape and characteristics of the site, two storey cottages rather than an apartment block were now planned close to the boundary with Bayswater Avenue, a green buffer was shown around the edges of the site and it was confirmed that there would be no vehicular access to the site from The Glen.
Issues of Concern
A number of issues remained and were voiced at the 23rd November meeting –
- While the total number of dwelling units has been reduced from 126 to 121 this is still considered too high because this number can only be accommodated by building high on the rear land.
- Three of the proposed four storey apartment blocks are still considered too high and too close to houses in The Glen and Royal Albert Road. The fourth block in the centre of the site is currently higher at 5/6 storey but is more distant from the surrounding roads.
- More information is needed on parking spaces numbers - there would be parking impacts in nearby roads were insufficient on – site parking provision.
- For road safety reasons there should be no vehicular access on Etloe Road / Bayswater Avenue, not even an access serving just three or four of the planned cottages.
A Few Words on the Benefits of the Proposed Development
When the plans for the site were announced earlier in the year there was general community support for the development in principle. It was recognised that the proposed extra care scheme would bring many benefits, eg. the retention of the front lodges/ villas and the listed Grace House, the provision of over 100 dwellings for people with increasing health issues, the provision of communal and leisure facilities for residents and the wider community. Against these benefits need to be now weighed the negative design and possible parking aspects of the proposed physical scheme referred to above which would particularly impact on those living close to the site.
The Open Sessions and Public Consultation
Two open sessions are being held by the developers in the next week. It is really important that as many people as possible go along to these sessions to learn directly about the plans for the site and give their views to the developers (and copy to the Community Association so that we are in a better position to represent community views).
The two open sessions are at St. Christopher’s on :-
Wednesday, 1st December from 3.00 – 7.00 pm
Saturday, 4th December from 9.30 am – 1.00 pm.
The developers are also inviting people to submit comments on the plans until Wednesday, 19th January (rather than 6th January which they had indicated in their leaflet which they sent out to local residents).
It should be noted that this is a developer organised public consultation exercise on their latest plans – there will be a further opportunity to submit comments to the City Council on the final plans at the formal planning application stage in the New Year.
If you have any queries, comments, etc. about St. Christopher's please email the Community Association at westburyparkca@gmail.com
The developer's St. Christopher's website can be found at www.stchristophersbristol.com/
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99 Devonshire Road
West-tec have started work on completing the flats after years of delay and constant lobbying on the part of the Community Association, local councillor and local residents to persuade the owner to take action.
The first stage will be to make the current structure weatherproof; putting on the roof, putting in doors and windows etc. With that done, the company will bring in industrial heaters to aim to get the whole thing dried out. The current judgement is that this is likely to succeed, but there will need to be a gap in construction work to check that is the case, and it is too early to say whether this will work throughout all the structure. When there is real confidence that everything has dried out properly, it’s crack on to full completion time. This all means that, while West-tec will fully complete the work, they can’t yet offer a final timescale
Thanks to everybody who has helped to get things moving because it is your efforts that have got us to this position
Update - 18th August 2021
The builders (West-tec) have been held up by the need to put in place a new party wall agreement. That complicated issue now looks close to being resolved so they hope to get work started again in or just after the week commencing 23rd August. They have in fact been gearing up for that very recently in order to be able to get re-started quickly so, for example, some roof trusses have already been ordered, various supplies are now sitting ready in the portakabins on site and they have been carefully checking the work done by the previous builders.
