Mayoral blog claims contradicted by planning officer
The only remaining farm in Bristol, Yew Tree Farm, has spent the last few years fighting off developers wanting to build on its land. Councillors from all parties, even the Labour administration, got together for a photo opportunity a couple of months ago, to support it as it fought for its existence.
The latest fight, however, has come from the administration itself as the council has decided that only the land adjoining Yew Tree Farm can be used to expand South Bristol Cemetery. The council has looked at no other sites and has lodged an application that will quite possibly make Yew Tree Farm’s existence untenable.
That would make the developers happy.
On the day the committee was meeting to consider the council’s application, the mayor wrote a blog saying that they had taken measures to “expand the existing South Bristol Cemetery and Crematorium, onto land that has been allocated for its expansion since the 1960s”.
He went on to say: “We are able to enact this expansion now, thanks to a long-sighted agreement between the Council and Yew Tree Farm.”
“In May 2021, council officers met with the farm, providing a generous temporary grazing agreement on the land beyond the scope of the initial expansion set to take place over ten years, in the knowledge that some of that land would be claimed back for the necessary burial expansion.”
That’s what the mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, published on the day of the meeting for the planning application.
Unfortunately for him, the planning officer at the committee meeting that evening directly contradicted both those statements.
There were two planning applications in the 1960s; one in 1963 and one in 1969. Between those two applications however, the planning legislation changed so the council did not now know whether those applications were extant.
In 2022, the council came to planning with a “certificate application” wanting to carry on with the planning permission that they had in 1963 and build out the rest of the cemetery.
“At the time that application was made, because there’s this issue with two separate applications which were made under two slightly different planning regimes but because of the lack of certainty of those 1960s application,… the council didn’t have enough evidence at the time that application was made to grant that certificate and allow them to carry on.”
Hence the council were advised to withdraw that application and put in a new application, which would allow members and the public to review the latest legislation and ensure the application was in accordance with that.
The planning officer went on to say that whether or not that planning permission was extant, that was not a material consideration in the current application.
The mayor would have known that the planning permission from the 1960s was not a material consideration and was not enough to grant the previous application in 2022. He would have also known all the factors the planning officer listed because they were used to reject the application.
The mayor’s assistant went on to tweet later that day that there had been many false representations to do with that planning application.
He was right. There were false representations.