Eagle House disappointment, one of many

Tracking Green Party promises

During their election campaign in 2024, the Greens promised to do a variety of things once in power. They didn’t do them. Pledge after pledge and promise after promise kept being broken. In an act of pure gaslighting, the Greens acted as if they’d never promised anything.

I refuse to let them go quiet on so many promises they made to the voting public. If they can’t keep to their word and if the press won’t hold them to account then I refuse to be silent.

To quote Milan Kundera:

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Now that they are in power, the Greens seem to want no scrutiny or questions. They mistakenly believe that it’s their choice whether we hold them to account. That’s not how it works.

I refuse to let them sell off assets in secret, reject questions from the public and stay quiet about what they do with our assets.

In line with this purpose, I have built the Bristol Promise Tracker website.

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

The Eagle House Youth Community Club, Knowle West

One of the Green pledges was to help the Eagle House campaigners take back a community youth club. The building on Newquay Road is near where Mason Rist, 15, and Max Dixon, 16, were stabbed to death in January 2024. It has been used as a church since 2016 by Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries (MFM).

The Greens campaigned to return it to the community. Cllr Makawi put forth a motion at Full Council in January 2024 proposing a set of measures to tackle knife crime in Bristol.

Green candidate for Filwood, Danica Priest, wrote:

"The Green Party fully supports the Eagle House campaigners and applauds the years of hard work they have put into this. This is the kind of grassroots action we should be celebrating. We urge all other candidates to join us in this pledge to give Eagle House back to the community if elected.

“our objective is to commence the process of terminating the lease within the initial 6 months of assuming office.”

Their two main pledges were to: 1) terminate the lease within six months of office, 2) hand the building back to the community.

Green MP Carla Denyer supported the Green Party actions in helping give Eagle House back to the community. She wrote: “Tragic events in Bristol recently have made it clear we must do more to protect our children & young people. Whilst there’s no single solution to stop knife crime overnight, I and @BristolGreen colleagues are taking actions that go to the root of the issue…” One of the tweets in the thread highlighted the work Green candidate Priest and Cllr Mohamed Makawi were doing

The Greens didn’t win in Filwood and in April 2025, Labour cllr Rob Logan asked for information from Green Council Leader Dyer about the fate of Eagle House.

Dyer replied:

"the currently recommended solution for the former Eagle House Youth Centre is full demolition as soon as practical after May 2026." The reason given was that “the building is in a poor state of repair” and that “the cost of remediation, compliance, and on-going management of the building is likely to be prohibitive for community use”.

Logan said:

“We have received an extremely disappointing response from the Leader of the Council regarding the former Eagle House Youth Centre, indicating that the Green Administration are unwilling to offer the building to community use when it returns to Council control, even on a short-term basis, and that the building is likely to be demolished.

This is not what we hoped to hear.”

This promise has been broken.

Yew Tree Farm

The promise about the Eagle House Youth Centre is not the only one the Greens have broken.

When the last working farm in Bristol, Yew Tree Farm, was threatened with destruction, the Green Party lobbied for its the protection. They appeared in many photo opportunities, published press releases, and made statements at committees.

In their manifesto, they say they would:

“Protect Sites of Nature Conservation Interest (SNCI) that Bristol City Council controls by preventing development on them.”

While in opposition, they called on Labour to “immediately revoke any lease or agreement” with the people who had been given a grazing licence until their destructive behaviour was investigated.

In power, they did not revoke the licence. Also, the Greens on the Liberal Democrat-led public health and communities committee resolved to continue with the project for the crematorium and to authorise the executive director of growth and regeneration, John Smith, to progress the preferred option.

Catherine Withers, who runs the farm, has said the Green Party, "would never get elected again" if the expansion goes ahead.

The new plan was approved in March 2025 and despite the manifesto pledge, there will be encroachment in the SNCI.

SEND Spying

A third promise broken was for an independent inquiry into the spying conducted on SEND mothers by officers. While in opposition, the Greens were vocal in their scrutiny of officers and in their criticism of Labour.

Now that they are in power and they chair the education committee and the strategy and resources committee, they have not sought an inquiry. We don’t know whether the spying is still occurring.

Frustrated mother, Jen Smith, who was spied on, asked the Green council leader whether he was “cowardly or just bent”.

Cllr Dyer replied “Neither.” He said that the motion for an enquiry was passed when the mayor was still in post and it was up to the mayor to ask for an enquiry but he did not do so. The suggestion was that the current administration were not bound to honour a motion directed at the previous administration.

In September 2024, the education and young people’s committee cut £273k from the statutory short breaks for disabled children because the previous administration had put that cut in the budget. It seems that when it suits them, the Greens can go either way on decisions.

We are the Local Memory

This ambivalence needs to be tracked. I plan to do this on my tracker. The disappointments with the Greens have been many. In fact, they have been so many that it’s become overwhelming just trying to talk about them.

But monitor and talk about them, we must.

See the Bristol Promise Tracker for further promises. This is a work in progress and I am happy to be held to account on it.

The Bristol Promise Tracker was made with the AI Agent Replit.