#Update 29 Put the community at the heart of new plans!
What’s happening on site?
As we reported in December the site has been put on the market. This is because the previous owners of the land - St Christopher’s Propco Ltd - went bust, and the land is now in the hands of the Official Receiver. Savills have been appointed by the Receiver to market the land and their guide price is around £10 million.
Interested parties have been invited to visit the site and members of SCAN went along with the Westbury Park Community Association. Sadly, the site has been neglected and is in a bad state of disrepair - with obvious damp and deterioration, particularly in the grade 2 listed Grace House. See more photos here.
We understand from Savills that a mix of residential developers, SEND school providers and Care providers have shown an interest in buying the land
In 2023 SCAN, by working with others, was able to get the site designated as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) under the Localism Act 2011. This in turn enabled us, in December, to trigger a six-month moratorium preventing the sale of the land until the end of May. This period allows community groups to bid for the site.. A final bidder is likely to be announced in June. It will be up to the receivers to decide who to sell the land to.
What is SCAN doing?
SCAN has been involved in bringing some community groups and SEND providers together - to see if they can work with each other to bid for the land. A few groups are interested in dividing the land and using different parts in different ways - some for housing and some for SEND provision. We are still exploring these conversations and making sure that everyone who is interested in bidding, knows what the community would like to see on the land - and what they DON’T want.
We continue to fight for sensitive and appropriate development and are calling prospective bidders to put community at the heart of any future development and for any potential scheme to be LOW RISE, LOW DENSITY AND LOW IMPACT to avoid the disastrous mistakes of the previous developers.
SCAN wants any new owner of the site to:
Not overdevelop the site
Protect the ecology of the site
Safeguard our streets by prioritising road safety and minimising parking impact
Respect the existing low-rise townscape and the Conservation Area status of the land
Honour the legacy of SEND provision & the Asset of Community Value status by providing some form of social and well-being benefit to the community.
We will be pushing for the community to be at the heart of any new plans and have prepared a planning brief with a broad overview of how we believe the site should be developed. The WPCA is also preparing a statement of planning principles, and we have worked closely with WPCA to ensure that these statements are largely compatible.
We will, to the best of our ability, be making our planning brief available to all potential developers. The aim here is ensure that the community is at the forefront of their minds as they develop their proposals. We also continue to push for meetings with all the bidders on the short list so we can discuss in greater detail the concerns and viewpoints of the community.
Our planning brief has already been submitted to Bristol City Council planning department and to Savills. You can read more about it on our website here.
Thanks to the Henleaze & Westbury voice for their coverage of our campaign this month. You can read more here.