Thursday, 29 September 2011
Powering Bristol in 2030
Last Thursday evening, I did a presentation as part of a Green Capital event called "Post Peak Oil - Powering Bristol in 2030". It was very well attended, with around fifty people in the auditorium at the CREATE Centre. Anyway, copies of all the presentations are now available online by following the link above.
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
School energy and community challenge
I spent most of this morning on one of my favourite duties, which is sitting on the funding panel for the Green Community Challenge Fund. This is a scheme that I helped to establish, allocating £75,000 a year to community groups and similar organisations in slabs of up to £10,000 to set up environmental projects and particularly those with a carbon-reduction theme. This is the second year of the Fund and it's great to hear about projects that we funded a year ago coming to fruition.
I don't want to break the results of the current round before the decisions are official and the organisations have been notified, but suffice it to say that we agreed to support half a dozen schemes mainly focused this time around community agriculture and local food production and use.
One which was funded in the last round is just getting going and I went to a project meeting yesterday. It's a collaborative project between Resource Futures and Sustainable Redland (with extra support from the Council) which aims to cut energy use in schools by training the pupils up to be auditors - turning off lights, monitoring temperature levels, switching off computers and the like. It will be operating in 13 schools in the coming weeks and the aim is to cut energy use by 10% and demonstrate how easy it is, while the children learn about sustainability and do some maths along the way.
Schools are about the only part of the Council's activities where energy use (and so carbon emissions) is still rising. This is partly due to longer school days and partly due to the increase in IT equipment, among other factors. With energy prices set to keep on rising (unless you're with a renewable supplier like me!), this is going to become an ever-growing pressure on school budgets and it's vital that they act sooner rather than later. A 10% cut in energy bills in any school pays for lots of new library books - or even extra staff in a large school.
The idea is for the project to come up with a scheme that can be rolled out to all schools in the city, saving them money on energy bills and the Council (and therefore, taxpayers) money in carbon tax. It feels like a really strong project team and I'm quite excited to see what comes back.
I don't want to break the results of the current round before the decisions are official and the organisations have been notified, but suffice it to say that we agreed to support half a dozen schemes mainly focused this time around community agriculture and local food production and use.
One which was funded in the last round is just getting going and I went to a project meeting yesterday. It's a collaborative project between Resource Futures and Sustainable Redland (with extra support from the Council) which aims to cut energy use in schools by training the pupils up to be auditors - turning off lights, monitoring temperature levels, switching off computers and the like. It will be operating in 13 schools in the coming weeks and the aim is to cut energy use by 10% and demonstrate how easy it is, while the children learn about sustainability and do some maths along the way.
Schools are about the only part of the Council's activities where energy use (and so carbon emissions) is still rising. This is partly due to longer school days and partly due to the increase in IT equipment, among other factors. With energy prices set to keep on rising (unless you're with a renewable supplier like me!), this is going to become an ever-growing pressure on school budgets and it's vital that they act sooner rather than later. A 10% cut in energy bills in any school pays for lots of new library books - or even extra staff in a large school.
The idea is for the project to come up with a scheme that can be rolled out to all schools in the city, saving them money on energy bills and the Council (and therefore, taxpayers) money in carbon tax. It feels like a really strong project team and I'm quite excited to see what comes back.
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
End of summer catch-up
Oh dear. It's been nearly a month since my last blog post... and after I promised to try to be more regular! September has been very busy for me personally and blogging always seems to be the thing that gets forced out. October looks much quieter, so fingers-crossed.
A few snippets then to catch-up on various bits of local news:
A few snippets then to catch-up on various bits of local news:
- Very pleased to report that my motion to Full Council on supermarkets was passed unanimously. I agreed a minor rewording with the Conservatives in advance and this meant that everyone felt able to vote for it. This is useful unity across all the parties on the Council and it means that Bristol can speak to the national government with one voice.
- Clifton Mini Mart have been refused permission to sell alcohol until midnight after what was apparently one of the shortest licensing hearings in history! They had applied in March and been given permission until 10pm, so they thought they'd apply again and hope for a different answer.
- I was happy to help a local family with saving their treehouse from over-zealous planning enforcement officers. The treehouse has been there for decades in various forms, but a complaint (no-one's quite sure who from!) triggered an investigation and the threat of removal as it didn't have planning permission. I was able to persuade planners that they had better things to worry about, especially as lots of people had written in supporting it and no-one could be found who wanted it to go. I hope they're getting good use out of it for what's left of the summer!
- Domino's Pizza have applied for an increase in the number of delivery drivers that they are allowed to use after 2am in the morning - it's currently two and they want five. People living nearby have objected as it means more cars whizzing around in the early hours, with all the shouting and slamming of doors that seems to go with it.
- I went along for a Q&A session with the fledgling traders' association on Cotham Hill a few weeks back. They are looking at new ways of raising the profile of the area to bring new customers in and I am playing with a few ideas that might help - very happy to hear any additional ones.
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Controlling supermarkets to preserve diversity
It’s now been three months since the bombshell was dropped that Sainsburys were opening a new store on Black Boy Hill, on the site of the old Woolworths. It’ll be opening up in the very near future, with only the blink of an eye between announcement and trading. It has also emerged that Tesco have acquired the old petrol station by the BBC, recently renewing the planning permission there for a block of flats with a shop below. Rumours abound that other supermarkets are also looking for a piece of the action locally too.
The evils or merits of supermarkets is not something that I am intending to play out here. I know that some communities are desperate to see supermarkets move into their area to allow them to buy economical produce without having to travel miles to get it. On the other hand, other communities (like Cotham) are very wary of their market dominance, supplier exploitation and unsustainable practices. The Who Feeds Bristol report, commissioned by the NHS Bristol, provides some salutary reminders about what it means to supply a city with food. What I want to develop here is a line about retail diversity and why supermarkets are a threat.
One of the points that I’ve had to make to people over and again is about how powerless the planning system is to manage our shopping centres for mutual benefit. Because the Black Boy Hill Sainsburys was a simple exchange of one shop for another, no planning permission was needed – in the eyes of the planning system, a shop is a shop is a shop, whether it’s a multinational chain or a lone trader and whether it’s a gun shop, a supermarket, an organic health food shop or a coffee shop. People expect the Council to be able to control what shops go where, but the reality is that this is generally far from the truth. I have argued previously that the Stokes Croft incidents were as much about a sense of community powerlessness as about Tesco itself – a shared outpouring of anger about disempowerment and disenfranchisement from the processes that shape a community.
At the June meeting of Full Council, I proposed a motion calling for a new ‘use class’ for supermarkets. ‘Use classes’ are the definitions of different types of operations that the planning system uses; e.g. A1 is retail, A2 is office, B1 is light industrial and so on. The way it works, in layperson’s terms, is that changes of operator within a ‘use class’ doesn’t need permission, but changes of ‘use class’ do.
By creating a new one, it would mean that supermarkets wouldn’t be considered in the same bucket as all other shops and their unique impact would be a factor in planning decisions. It wouldn’t be a ban on new supermarkets, but it would mean that there had to be a formal application for a change and a discussion where different views could be expressed.
Specifically, I want to see councils have the power to protect diversity on our high streets. Retail areas need a number of factors to ensure that they remain vibrant. They need to have mix of shops that serve the community directly on a daily basis and those ‘destination’ shops that pull people into the street for a specific purpose. They also need to have a number of different ‘offers’ to ensure that they appeal to a wide cross-section of society – not a monoculture based too heavily around a single sector in direct competition. And this is where my greatest fears about supermarkets are to be found. If you end up with one of each brand of convenience store on the same road, you firstly limit the number of shop units that are available for ‘destination’ shops and secondly run a risk of the area simply becoming a parade of identikit supermarkets vying for the same localised trade.
I have been working for a couple of years now to get protection in Bristol’s planning policy for preserving A1 use in shopping areas, especially against the encroachment of food and drink outlets which are rarely daytime ‘destinations’ and which lessen the ‘offer’. I was heartened recently to discover that I seem to have won the argument with officers and that a strong assumption for the retention of shops in shopping areas will be in the next generation of planning policy – watch this space! Sadly, however, because supermarkets are included in A1 use, this won’t have any impact on their spread within A1 shop units. The tool that the Council really needs in the toolbox is for supermarkets to be treated differently.
New ‘use classes’ are created every now and again, especially where a particular type of operation starts to cause societal problems; the most recent was the creation last year of the C4 ‘use class’ for multiple-occupancy housing.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get time to discuss my motion in June, so it has gone forwards for next week's Full Council when it should get time. The Council doesn’t have the power to create new ‘use classes’ itself. It needs the national government to do this and it only generally happens after a lengthy consultation period. But you can’t ever finish a long journey unless you start it! What I am hoping is that we can get cross-party support for the idea within Bristol, which I can then use to apply pressure on ministers.
The evils or merits of supermarkets is not something that I am intending to play out here. I know that some communities are desperate to see supermarkets move into their area to allow them to buy economical produce without having to travel miles to get it. On the other hand, other communities (like Cotham) are very wary of their market dominance, supplier exploitation and unsustainable practices. The Who Feeds Bristol report, commissioned by the NHS Bristol, provides some salutary reminders about what it means to supply a city with food. What I want to develop here is a line about retail diversity and why supermarkets are a threat.
One of the points that I’ve had to make to people over and again is about how powerless the planning system is to manage our shopping centres for mutual benefit. Because the Black Boy Hill Sainsburys was a simple exchange of one shop for another, no planning permission was needed – in the eyes of the planning system, a shop is a shop is a shop, whether it’s a multinational chain or a lone trader and whether it’s a gun shop, a supermarket, an organic health food shop or a coffee shop. People expect the Council to be able to control what shops go where, but the reality is that this is generally far from the truth. I have argued previously that the Stokes Croft incidents were as much about a sense of community powerlessness as about Tesco itself – a shared outpouring of anger about disempowerment and disenfranchisement from the processes that shape a community.
At the June meeting of Full Council, I proposed a motion calling for a new ‘use class’ for supermarkets. ‘Use classes’ are the definitions of different types of operations that the planning system uses; e.g. A1 is retail, A2 is office, B1 is light industrial and so on. The way it works, in layperson’s terms, is that changes of operator within a ‘use class’ doesn’t need permission, but changes of ‘use class’ do.
By creating a new one, it would mean that supermarkets wouldn’t be considered in the same bucket as all other shops and their unique impact would be a factor in planning decisions. It wouldn’t be a ban on new supermarkets, but it would mean that there had to be a formal application for a change and a discussion where different views could be expressed.
Specifically, I want to see councils have the power to protect diversity on our high streets. Retail areas need a number of factors to ensure that they remain vibrant. They need to have mix of shops that serve the community directly on a daily basis and those ‘destination’ shops that pull people into the street for a specific purpose. They also need to have a number of different ‘offers’ to ensure that they appeal to a wide cross-section of society – not a monoculture based too heavily around a single sector in direct competition. And this is where my greatest fears about supermarkets are to be found. If you end up with one of each brand of convenience store on the same road, you firstly limit the number of shop units that are available for ‘destination’ shops and secondly run a risk of the area simply becoming a parade of identikit supermarkets vying for the same localised trade.
I have been working for a couple of years now to get protection in Bristol’s planning policy for preserving A1 use in shopping areas, especially against the encroachment of food and drink outlets which are rarely daytime ‘destinations’ and which lessen the ‘offer’. I was heartened recently to discover that I seem to have won the argument with officers and that a strong assumption for the retention of shops in shopping areas will be in the next generation of planning policy – watch this space! Sadly, however, because supermarkets are included in A1 use, this won’t have any impact on their spread within A1 shop units. The tool that the Council really needs in the toolbox is for supermarkets to be treated differently.
New ‘use classes’ are created every now and again, especially where a particular type of operation starts to cause societal problems; the most recent was the creation last year of the C4 ‘use class’ for multiple-occupancy housing.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get time to discuss my motion in June, so it has gone forwards for next week's Full Council when it should get time. The Council doesn’t have the power to create new ‘use classes’ itself. It needs the national government to do this and it only generally happens after a lengthy consultation period. But you can’t ever finish a long journey unless you start it! What I am hoping is that we can get cross-party support for the idea within Bristol, which I can then use to apply pressure on ministers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)