Land at the Former Hillfields Park Community Centre, community engagement

Bristol City Council’s Housing Delivery Team is preparing an outline planning application seeking permission to upgrade an access road and secure outline permission for the delivery of affordable homes on the site of the former Hillfields Park Community Centre, Thicket Avenue, Hillfields.

Who are we?

Bristol City Council’s Housing Delivery Team help to deliver new affordable housing projects across the city. This includes a focus on building and acquiring new council homes. We also work with a range of affordable housing delivery partners, including housing associations, community groups and developers to increase the supply of new affordable housing across Bristol.

It is our ambition that the proposals for this site will be delivered and managed by one of our affordable housing delivery partners.

What are we looking to do?

We want to enable the delivery of a small-scale affordable housing scheme on the site of the demolished community centre and the currently derelict former football club, which is prone to anti-social behaviour including incidents of fly-tipping, break-ins, and vandalism.

We want to ensure that any new housing scheme incorporates the needs of existing and future residents, by providing good quality and well-designed housing. An initial appraisal of the site has indicated there could be space for around ten new homes.

The intention for the site is to provide new affordable housing for residents of Bristol, and we will work with any future delivery partner to ensure the amount of affordable housing delivered meets local requirements. To enable the delivery of a housing scheme, improvements to the access road will be required, which would benefit both existing and future users.

The Housing Delivery Team has secured a grant from Central Government in the form of Brownfield Land Release Funding, which will help fund improvements to the access road.

The outline planning application will seek permission to make improvements to the access road, as well as permission to develop the site for housing. As this will be an outline planning application, it will not provide specific details on what any future housing could look like. Instead, the application will focus on high-level detail such as the number of homes the site could provide, and the amount of land required for landscaping and car parking.

If outline planning permission is granted, then the chosen delivery partner would need to submit additional plans to the council for further approval before they could start construction. Residents would be given further opportunity to comment on those plans when they are available.

This survey asked for views on high-level proposals for the delivery of new homes on the site, as well as changes to the access road.

Where we plan to develop

The site is located in the Hillfields ward in East Bristol. It was historically known as the Hillfields Park Community Centre, which was demolished, and also includes the old football club building which was more recently used as the changing facilities for the nearby Hillfields Park sports pitches. Since then, the building has fallen into disrepair and is no longer fit to be used by community groups.

Listed below are some of the benefits and the opportunities that developing this site could bring:

Improving pedestrian connections to Hillfields Park

There's currently a pedestrian lane providing a direct access route to Hillfields Park from Thicket Avenue via a gateway on the western edge of the site. The access route is poorly lit and obscured by overgrown vegetation, which can be off-putting to pedestrians and park users.

By developing the site for affordable housing there is an opportunity to upgrade the pedestrian lane and provide a safer, more welcoming route through to Hillfields Park.

Keeping existing trees

Tall semi-mature trees on the western site boundary provide natural screening for existing residents. We would look to retain existing trees where possible to help reduce overlooking and the potential for impact on the park.

Reducing anti-social behaviour

The site is currently derelict, poorly lit and secluded, which makes it prone to anti-social behaviour such as fly-tipping. New housing could help reduce fly-tipping and other forms of anti-social behaviour as there will be residents living on-site.