Bristol Cable - Issue 32

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DEAR READER,

Our cover story is the next instalment of our Future of Cities solutions journalism project. This time, we look at whether taking Bristol’s struggling bus services back under more public control could help fix the current crisis of driver shortages and improve reliability.

Opinion: Do e-scooter regulations need a new approach? p.38

As well as exploring solutions, we’ve also been doing our bread and butter: uncovering wrongdoing and injustice. Our exclusive investigation into rogue landlord and luxury yacht owner Thomas Flight exposes the extent of his secrecy, lies and intimidation. We’re finally able to publish this story a year after we started looking into it, after Flight was recently convicted of consumer protection offences. Our reporter Sean Morrison reveals that there were more tenants affected than those whose cases reached the courtroom. Our other stories include on-the-ground reporting from Lockleaze and Bedminster, powerful first person tales of living with undiagnosed ADHD and suffering from perinatal mental health crises, and an insight into the work of those tackling food inequality.

We’ve also got something new for you: Crosswords and cartoons! We thought it would be nice to cap the edition off with some fun and games.

The Cable was founded to show that a different kind of local paper was possible. Eight years later, a parliamentary report into local journalism has cited the Cable as an inspiring example of innovation, while calling for long-term government funding to address the decline in local media.

We are punching above our weight in an industry facing huge financial challenges and future government backing for the industry will be welcome. But it’s the support of our thousands-strong membership that got us to this point, and building it further that will make our future more secure. Join us: thebristolcable.org/join

The Cable team

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And to all contributors, sources and contacts.

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Media team

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Print production coordination

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Tech team

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Special projects team

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Front page photo Izzy de Wattripont

Contents

What we've been up to

News in brief

The best of recent Cable reporting you might have missed

Feature

Inside the project tackling Bristol’s rising food inequality

Lockleaze In Focus Modern eco homes thwarted by building delays leaving buyers in limbo

BS3 In Focus

The population south of the river is about to explode, so what does a positive future vision look like for BS3?

News

Landlord under investigation for breach of court order

Voices ‘How therapy saved my life, but it became hard to live without it’

Cover Story: Future of Cities

Is taking Bristol’s bus services into public hands the quickest route out of the current mess?

Photo essay

A day in the life down at ‘Lawrence Hill Lido’

Investigation

We reveal how the pattern of secrecy, intimidation and lies by a rogue landlord extends beyond what he was convicted of

Feature

Meet Bristolians receiving payouts for mistreatment by the police

Feature Users share their experiences of the city’s struggling sexual health services

History

The curious case of a Dutch pianist who was the victim of a hoax

Culture

How nightclubs are important for our mental health

Culture Turbo Island: What next for the cultural battleground?

NEW: Puzzles!

Opinion

Why should Voi have a monopoly on e-scooters?

Opinion How undiagnosed ADHD is holding women back

Special thanks to… Mike Jempson

Elected directors: Julia Beasley, Alain Demontoux, Mandy Rose, Yasha Maccanico, Nick Plant, Sereena Abbassi, Ben Harris, Georgie Edwards, Alexandra Henden, Rosie O’Sullivan

Thanks to the Reva and David Logan Foundation, and Luminate for their continued support.

Welcome to our 32nd edition!

There is plenty to announce this quarter: we have new staff, new funding, and new promises from the council to protect Bristol’s renters – citing the Cable’s reporting as inspiration.

CABLE NEWS

First, we’re excited to welcome a new journalist to our team!

Priyanka Raval, who was with the Cable for a year during 2020 as an early career journalist, joined us this month as our new reporter. Bristol born and raised, Priy has continued to contribute pieces for the Cable as a freelancer, including coverage of Bristol Airport expansion, the winter strikes, and Bristol’s cultural life. We’re glad to welcome her back to the editorial team to do more embedded community reporting across the city.

In a time of crisis, reliable public-interest reporting is more important than ever. Read on for evidence of how the Cable is making tangible change in the lives of Bristolians. We can only continue this work by building our membership. Join us!

Transport: The second strand of our solutions journalism project begins

This edition launches the second of three strands in our Future of Cities series, which is all about transport. And it’s come at an interesting moment: while we were reporting on our first strand – solutions to Bristol’s housing crisis – the city’s transport crisis became even worse than usual, with bus services slashed due to a driver shortage and limited funding.

Our first story asks whether taking buses back into public hands can sort out the current mess. At the beginning of the year we held a meeting with a group of local transport experts, who helped us better understand the existing problems around transport in Bristol and explore solutions for us to report on.

We also have an upcoming public event on 25 February where you can discuss transport solutions with us, which is free to attend. For more details, visit: thebristolcable.org/events

Our final strand will focus on resources; water, food, energy and more. So keep your eyes peeled for more in-depth reporting on solutions over the next few months, and how you can be involved in making them a reality for Bristol: thebristolcable.org/futurecities

How much does it cost to produce the Cable?

We want to make the Bristol Cable as sustainable, democratic, and as representative of our city as possible by building our loyal membership base.

Members now provide the biggest chunk of our core funding, without which we would not be able to produce the independent local journalism we do for Bristol.

A huge part of what inspires Bristolians to become members of the Cable is trust, and trust requires transparency. We’ve been busy updating the website so you can find out more about the value of the Cable’s membership, how we put your money to good use and how much it costs to produce highquality journalism.

The Bristol Cable wins grant funding for community tech

We’re excited to announce that the Cable has won funding to expand our community tech work, with a two-year grant of £40,000 from Power to Change, a charity that invests in community businesses. This will allow us to go on maintaining and developing our in-house membership and community engagement platform, and to make it more accessible for other community organisations to use.

For example, we now show how many members, and at what contribution level, we need to break even, or to grow into a larger organisation. We’ve also updated our list of funders, and written a guide to how much you might contribute in membership depending on your income.

We want to ensure that members understand not only the Cable’s value, but also how valuable members’ contributions are to our sustainability.

All these updates can be found at the Join, About, and Transparency pages on our website. As ever, a huge thank you to all our membersand if you’re reading the Cable but haven’t yet joined us, go to thebristolcable.org/join today.

How Cable reporting inspired council action on rogue landlords

In January, Bristol City Council passed a joint Labour-Green motion aimed at levelling the playing field in the private rental sector. Among other measures was a commitment to introduce a public database of enforcement notices given to Bristol rogue landlords who break the rules, if the government doesn’t bring in a national database.

Green councillors, who brought the idea to the motion alongside a handful of other additions, cited our article from last year – Would a database that names and shames rogue landlords help protect renters? – as the inspiration.

The Cable’s tech lead, Will Franklin, said: “Our membership and engagement platform, built in-house, is a core component of the democratic engagement we have with our members. It allows us to engage with them directly, and simultaneously reach wider communities in the city, for example, through callouts allowing people to respond to questions such as ‘How is Bristol’s bus chaos affecting you?’ or ‘Should we do more culture, or news coverage?'

“The grant will allow us to continue this work, and build on our innovative, grassroots community tech work not only for Bristol, but for other community based organisations around the UK too.”

Green councillor Tom Hathway, who brought the motion with council housing chief Tom Renhard, said: “The Cable highlighted the success of a rogue landlord database in London, and actions in the motion now include reviewing enforcement policy and maintaining a public database of enforcement against rogue landlords in Bristol if the government’s proposed landlord portal doesn’t materialise.”

A database would mean greater transparency when landlords are prosecuted for breaking the law, helping tenants see if their current or prospective landlord has been up to no good.

NEWS IN NEWSBRIEFIN BRIEF

More psychedelic drugs to become legal medicines for therapy, says Bristol scientist Conspiracy theorist in recovery speaks out

A former conspiracy theorist of 15 years has spoken out about how he became detached from reality – and his current mission to help others avoid it.

In a brand-new Cable documentary, Brent Lee Regan from Brislington tells us about how got lost in the rise of disinformation on the early noughties internet, but eventually managed to pull himself out of it.

At a time when the UK was on the brink of invading Iraq, his anti-war views attracted him to conspiracy documentaries, including about 9/11. As his interest grew and he consumed

more material, he became more and more isolated from friends and family.

“I think it can happen to anyone,” he said. “If you distrust the media or the government, you’re going to look for a source of information somewhere else… Today, I’m trying to speak about my journey down the rabbit hole and coming out of it again.”

Brent now has a YouTube channel where he talks about his experience in the hope he can help others avoid the traps he fell for.

You can watch the full documentary at thebristolcable.org/conspiracy

Dr Ben Sessa, from Clifton's Awakn Life Sciences clinic, which offers ketamine-assisted therapy, reckons the end of the war on drugs is near and that other psychedelics will become licensed medicines in years to come.

In an interview for the Cable’s Bristol Unpacked podcast, Sessa said: “The end of the war on drugs is in sight. We’re seeing that all over the world. The UN will shift their policy by 2030 and domestic nation states are shifting their policies autonomously. It clearly hasn’t worked.”

Sessa, who has been involved in other research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, now works at the Awakn clinic, one of only four of its kind in the world. Patients can receive an 11-week programme of

New bid to save ‘community asset’ St George’s Hall from redevelopment as flats

Campaigners trying to save a former Wetherspoons with a hidden historic cinema from being turned into flats say they are renewing efforts to get the building listed as a community asset.

The Save Redfield Cinema group is preparing a new bid to secure asset of community value (ACV) status for St George’s Hall, which contains a 110-year-old auditorium, on Church Road. The group previously managed to get the pub building listed as an ACV in 2021, before it was overturned on a technicality. The status must be

taken into account by planners and gives community groups time – though not an automatic right – to try to buy the asset in the event of any resale.

The building was sold for £800,000 in 2021 to developer Landrose, which resubmitted a planning application just before Christmas to convert it into a 44-bed house of multiple occupation (HMO). The plans are for 13 ‘cluster unit’ flats that share amenities, promoting criticisms from locals of cramped living conditions that do little to alleviate the local housing crisis.

therapy, including four sessions where they are given a dose of ketamine, which is intended to facilitate new ways of thinking and make it easier to tackle trauma or past issues.

“In the past 20-30 years, we’ve had this psychedelic renaissance, with a huge increase in this field of medicine,” he added.

Ketamine is currently the only psychedelic drug that is a licensed medicine. Others, such as MDMA and psilocybin, present in magic mushrooms, have been combined with therapy in research studies. But Sessa said other drugs could become licensed medicines in the future, including MDMA by the end of 2024.

Listen to the full episode here: thebristolcable.org/bristolunpacked

Council to call for rent controls, alongside other protections for renters

In January, Bristol City Council passed a Labour-Green motion committing to take action where possible to protect private renters. The council is set to ask the government for new powers to introduce rent controls in the city. Its Living Rent Commission has been exploring the issue in recent months and is due to release a final report soon, which is expected to advocate for a particular model of rent controls.

January's motion also made a commitment to publish an annual ‘living rent index’ of what affordable rents would be, and maintain a public list of enforcement notices

Cooking up a storm: the project tackling Bristol’s rising food inequality

The Mazi Project provides pre-portioned meal kits to marginalised young people in a bid to address food inequality in the city

Emma Blackmore

It’s packing day for the Mazi Project. Inside the organisation’s North Street premises, root vegetables dangle over crates and an earthy aroma of fresh thyme and parsley fills the air. In the kitchen, parmesan is being weighed and preportioned, ready for today’s dish: lentil bolognese.

“Food is a massive part of my life,” adds Vaxevanakis, who grew up in Greece where food and culture are inextricably linked. “Food is connected with my memories and my experiences now, but not everyone has access to a dining table and fresh food.

“For me, food is so much more than eating – it’s about fuelling self-worth.”

The meal boxes and recipes are designed in collaboration with the young people and local chefs to deliver fresh, diverse flavours.

“We provide the young people full autonomy over the food they like to eat,” Vaxevanakis says. “We want everyone to feel fabulous and empowered by recipes we send over, and having choice over the food we eat is such a simple way of offering this.”

Each week, the young people receive a text with a selection of recipes they can choose from for up to three meals. In the meal kits, the ingredients are pre-portioned and also include oil, spices, a sweet treat and a recipe book. Each meal is made of two portions, enough for both lunch and dinner.

“2022 has been a huge year of growth,” Vaxevanakis tells the Cable. “We have cemented our position with our new premise in North Street [and have] worked with amazing chefs and restaurants hosting cooking workshops.”

In December, Bristol-born Game of Thrones actor Maisie Williams also became an ambassador of the project, helping raise its profile.

‘We need community action’

against landlords if no such national database materialises following the Renters Reform Bill. The Cable was credited with raising this idea last year, asking whether London’s rogue landlord checking service could make a difference if recreated in Bristol.

Other measures in the motion included finding ways to end the practice of rental ‘bidding wars’, which have become the target of a campaign by community union ACORN.

It also committed to enforcing the ban on letting agent fees, establishing a regular renters’ forum and lobbying the government to abolish controversial ‘Right to Rent’ checks.

“It’s slightly chaotic,” project founder Melanie Vaxevanakis laughs. “Everyone’s working in a small space, but packing day is a beautiful indication of hope as we’re all working together. People really come together to make a difference.”

Vaxevanakis set up the Mazi Project in response to the free school meals scandal in January 2021. A private firm was shamed for the food parcels it provided to the country’s poorest families during lockdown, which each cost taxpayers £30 but were criticised as being stingy and low quality.

Then 24, Vaxevanakis started a fundraiser to provide families eligible

for free school meals with food vouchers. Within five days, she’d raised £1,000 for more than 20 children and provided £450 worth of food vouchers to refugee families through the Bristol Refugee Rights charity. Following this success, she refocused the project to provide meal boxes to young domestic abuse survivors, asylum seekers, care leavers and recently homeless young people, aged 16 to 26.

So much more than eating

With one in eight households experiencing food insecurity in Bristol’s most deprived wards, the Mazi Project is determined to address the city’s food inequality. It now supports 70 young people via its meal boxes and has prepared more than 10,000 individual meals and delivered more than 4,500 meal kits across Bristol. Young people are referred through partner organisations such as Caring in Bristol, which works with people at

risk of homelessness, domestic abuse support organisation Next Link, and the council.

“We’ve had a 45% increase in referrals in September [2022], which is huge,” Vaxevanakis explains. “We had personal messages from people saying they are desperate for food,”

The project is funded through private donations, fundraisers, grants, endorsements and corporate sponsorships. It depends on volunteers for packing days.

During 2023, the organisation hopes to double the number of young people who receive boxes to 140, and switch its status from being a community interest company to a charity.

The Mazi Project aims to use food as a foundation to create change and champion young people through increasing awareness of sustainable food and packaging, and using locally sourced ingredients.

“Our goal for this year is to create sustainable menus and to empower marginalised young people in the fight against climate change,” Vaxevanakis says.

From March, the Mazi Project will be running a supper club for young people to discover new flavours, gain accreditation and experience working in a kitchen. It also continues to provide research and work alongside Bristol’s Food Equality Action Plan, a strategy aiming to tackle food inequality by 2032.

“We have to show that people within city organisations are accountable and do make a difference,” Vaxevanakis says. “In order to change, we need community action.” •

Meet the south Bristol man on a mission to save others from conspiracy theories, plus other stories you may have missed

Matty Edwards

“For me, food is so much more than eating – it’s about fuelling self-worth”

Photo: David Griffiths

AREAIN FOCUS Lockleaze

Brickwork at the Bonnington housing development had to be taken down because of quality issues, causing a six-month delay at the site

time for a 31 January deadline set by the government.

‘This was meant to be a fast build’ Over recent years, modular house building solutions have been touted as an important measure towards tackling the national housing crisis. They are quick to build and can have a lower carbon footprint than traditional methods – although the new techniques have not caught on as fast as expected in UK, and firms including L&G have lost money.

Bonnington, where homes are designed for “maximum energy efficiency”, accounts for a fifth of 1,000 new dwellings planned for Lockleaze, most of which are not modular.

But it is not the only modular scheme in Bristol to have made slower progress than promised. In December 2022, Bristol Live reported that buyers at the BoKlok development in south Bristol, on which Ikea is a partner, had also been told they would not be moving into new homes in time for Christmas as expected.

Some reportedly had to be put up in Airbnbs, with BoKlok citing “challenges with regard to supply chain, materials and labour”.

On Landseer Walk, just behind L&G’s Bonnington site, residents tell the Cable brickwork began to go onto the modular cores at the end of summer 2022, followed by windows.

of affected prospective residents. They include people who were going through Help to Buy and are now unlikely to be able to move in.

“They noticed quite a serious mistake and pulled all the brickwork down,” she says. “I would like to see all new builds in Lockleaze living up to the very high standards they’re supposed to be built to.”

A Legal & General Modular Homes spokesperson told the Cable that problems had been down to build quality and delays getting the right kinds of supplies. “We are committed to creating homes to our exacting quality standards, and our programme takes into account delivery to these standards,” they said.

All prospective buyers have received “individual timelines for when they will be able to move, as well as help and advice depending on their circumstance”, the spokesperson added. “Our delivery programme has also considered the wellbeing of all of our customers as it is important that when they move into their new homes, that they are able to do so without disturbance from ongoing building operations.”

A Bristol City Council spokesperson said that as Bonnington is an L&G project, the council has no formal powers over the site.

“We are aware they are working to complete their development as quickly as possible,” the council’s spokesperson added. “Modern methods of construction (MMC) is an innovative tool to tackle the housing crisis and address the barriers to delivering affordable homes.”

Left out

in the cold: construction defects undermine promise of modern eco-homes

State-of-the-art methods and green technology are part of the appeal of new-build housing schemes. But in Lockleaze, where hundreds of homes are in the pipeline, new and prospective residents are facing delays and disappointment as contractors struggle to deliver

Alex Turner

For 29-year-old Simon* and his partner, moving to Bristol promised the chance to live “halfway between our families” in a city they love.

Unlike the cliché of grinning Londoners heading up the M4 waving bags of money, they are relocating from Yorkshire. Despite having good jobs, as first-time buyers they have found it tough to find somewhere they could afford in the city. A development off Bonnington Walk in Lockleaze seemed to offer the solution.

The 185-home Bonnington development, owned by financial services giant Legal & General (L&G), is one of several in Bristol being built using modern ‘modular’ construction methods. The central core of a home is built in L&G’s factory near Leeds before being shipped to the site and finished there, which on paper makes for a quick and efficient build.

Insulation and brickwork began going onto the modular cores in late

summer 2022. By November, Bristol’s mayor Marvin Rees and L&G chief executive Sir Nigel Wilson launched Bonnington, which is only L&G’s second modular scheme. Rees said he was “delighted” at the it “combines affordability [50% of homes meet the definition] with sustainability”.

But within weeks, Lockleaze residents noticed homes – which had seemed nearly complete – being taken apart. Before Christmas, by which time Simon and his partner had hoped to move into their new home, L&G had written with bad news. Problems with poor workmanship meant the homes would not be ready until early summer.

The announcement meant buyers not only putting their lives on hold for six months but facing an anxious wait on extending mortgage offers, with borrowing rates having risen sharply over 2022. Some, who signed up to the national Help to Buy loan scheme, look set to miss out altogether because the homes will not be finished in

“The windows seemed to be a problem – one night I was looking out of my kitchen, there were three guys with torches, looking at the frames,” says Malcolm, a retiree. Soon afterwards, “plastic sheets went up around the frames,” Malcolm adds.

“Then they started taking bricks off.”

The Bonnington development, built on a green space once occupied by allotments, has attracted plenty of opposition in Lockleaze. But Malcolm says he’s in favour of the scheme – so long as the homes are good-quality.

“I feel sad for people, I want them to have homes to live in, that’s what we need,” he says. “This was meant to be a fast build – but I feel like some of the people working on it don’t understand how [the modular method] works, you could see them scratching their heads.”

‘New builds need to live up to high standards’

Local Green councillor Heather Mack says she has heard from a number

The council spokesperson added that the authority is learning from the sites being developed using different methods “to improve our knowledge and our ability to work with MMC companies”.

The council has also written to the government to ask it to extend the Help to Buy deadline by a further 12 months. “Many people will not be able to continue the purchase of their homes because of delays, and without this funding they will be unable to afford them,” the spokesperson said. Simon and his partner recently got better news on their mortgage, with an extension being offered provided they stick with Bonnington. But he says the problems have shaken their faith, and they are likely to back out, meaning their move to Bristol is back to the drawing board.

“We could keep waiting for this –but I don’t have any confidence that Legal & General will be able to build our house,” he says. •

*Name has been changed

About a mile’s walk across Lockleaze from the Bonnington site, off Shaldon Road, is the 50-home Merry Hill scheme. The Cable reported on its backstory in a piece looking at community-led housing projects, as part of our Future of Cities solutions journalism series.

Despite challenges and delays in the project, led by Brighter Places housing association and Bristol Community Land Trust, many residents are happy with the community they have built at Merry Hill. But as with Bonnington there are apparent issues with builders not delivering to relevant standards. At Merry Hill this means Passivhaus eco-home principles, with the homes designed around a draught-proof ‘thermal envelope’.

“When the cold weather hit I was surprised to discover that we couldn’t heat the area inside our front door,” resident Sam Bloomfield, 51, tells the Cable. “If we leave the living room door open, we struggle to get the downstairs up to a reasonable temperature – not unexpected in a Victorian house, but this is meant to be a Passivhaus.”

Bloomfield arranged for Bristol’s CHEESE Project, an energy-efficiency specialist, to survey his home. It identified air leaking in and out, and missing insulation, he says.

“We find frequent evidence of poor building practice, especially in newly built homes,” says Iris Partridge, the CHEESE Project business manager. “These faults mean a home is harder to heat, with higher energy costs and a bigger carbon footprint.

“These faults are not [though] unique to developments with high environmental credentials,” she adds. “From our perspective, this is a serious issue of hidden faulty building practices in many newly built homes, extensions and renovations, and needs to be addressed urgently, with better training and tougher oversight of large building companies, trade professionals and their work.”

A Brighter Places spokesperson told the Cable the landlord was “aware of reports by a number of residents who have had issues getting their heating up to a reasonable temperature, and concerns about window and door seals”.

They added that Brighter Places had commissioned a renewable energy specialist to check over the heating and ventilation systems in all homes at Merry Hill, and asked contractors to carry out remedial work to windows and doors. •

Merry Hill resident Sam Bloomfield outside his home

‘Building companies need tougher oversight’

AREA FOCUSIN BS3

Community consultation

In Bedminster, there are cranes on the horizon, something mayor Marvin Rees uses to show the council is taking action to fix the city’s housing crisis, with 19,000 households on the social housing waiting list.

Rees has set the target of building 1,000 new affordable homes a year by 2024. In 2021/22, 474 affordable homes were completed, the highest number since 2010 but still well off the council’s own target for next year.

Bristol also has a housebuilding target of 3,300 homes a year set by the government. Dyer recently brought a motion urging the council to ditch this unrealistic goal, because if it isn’t met it allows developers to ignore planning rules. The council has since written to the government, calling for a discussion about a more realistic figure.

Combating this sense of powerlessness in the face of a complex planning system is top of the agenda for Action Greater Bedminster’s ‘BS3 Beyond 2025’ project. Ellie Freeman, the chair of AGB, says: “We're all aware of the pressure on schools, how long it takes to get a doctor's appointment. All this is going to get worse.”

Under construction: BS3’s vision for the future

The populations of Bedminster, Southville and Windmill Hill are about to explode due to major housing developments. A new community project is asking what the future should hold for the area

Matty Edwards

Tucked away between Bedminster Parade and Victoria Park is Windmill Hill City Farm.

On a sunny afternoon, the usually peaceful place is disrupted by the hum and banging of building sites all around, as cranes and scaffolding loom.

Maureen, 74, has lived in nearby Totterdown for almost 20 years.

“It’s ridiculous,” she says. “There’s already housing stacked together.

It’s bad for mental health.”

She’s referring to the housebuilding boom underway in Bedminster, Southville and

Windmill Hill. With thousands of homes being built or awaiting approval, the population of BS3 is expected to grow by 40% in the next 15 to 20 years, prompting concerns about stretched local services.

This is why local community group Action Greater Bedminster is embarking on a project to empower local people to have their say on proposed developments and help build a vision for the area.

Maureen lists her priorities: “More schools, dentists and doctors. No high tower blocks. And don’t take away any bloody green space –we need more if anything!”

Population explosion Green councillor for Southville Tony Dyer has calculated there are 6,640 homes and 2,400 student beds in BS3 either being built, with planning permission, or planned for the future.

The major development underway along Malago Road is Bedminster Green, which could see more than 2,300 new homes. Just up the road is another regeneration area – Whitehouse Street –with the development framework to be released for consultation this year.

And next to that are the Mead Street developments: part of the Temple Quarter zone, which last year made headlines when plans for an 11-storey

block were approved on the old Bart Ingredients site on York Road, despite complaints from local residents about the quality of housing and impact it would have on the iconic view of the Totterdown escarpment.

Maria Clarke has lived in the area for nearly 40 years. “While I know there is a demand for good quality housing, I don't think much of what is being built are good homes for families and young people. There needs to be more social housing with less high rise, more green spaces and enough GPs, schools, community venues.”

“I don't know why there is so much building in south Bristol. It’s now so crowded I have thought about moving out for the first time. I love living here but it’s becoming somewhat oppressive at times. Why can't developments happen in other areas of the city?”

Priorities that recur are protecting green space and limiting high-rise blocks. Green councillor for Windmill Hill, Ed Plowden, who also sits on one of the council’s planning committees, says: “There is massive evidence for high density without high rise. High rise is not good for health or sustainability.

“Lots of developers are forced to have a bit of open space on their plot, but it’s often small and overshadowed by large buildings,” he adds.

in the process,” she says. “The group did create a manifesto based on community meetings, but without much impact.”

By contrast, the consultation so far on the Whitehouse Street development has been much more proactive, Freeman says. "The council brought us on board from the beginning. It was about trying to reach people who wouldn't usually feed in.”

The manifesto they created is being considered as part of the framework document for the development, due to be released this year for consultation. Applications for nine plots will then be submitted, and it could take 10 years before everything is completed.

The prioritisation of community consultation was made easier by the council being a majority landowner. But Freeman hopes lessons can be learned for other areas of the city.

"The issue is what gets built at the end – will people see that their voices go all the way through and… therefore get involved again with the next development?”

Services under strain

"There have been times where we've been burned, thinking we'd get loads of affordable, not getting any,” she adds. AGB wants to create a comprehensive online resource to help residents understand the various developments, so they know how to have an impact.

Alongside the website, AGB is going to organise a series of community meetings over the next six months, before a closing celebration in September where a vision for the future of the area will be presented. For Freeman, two major developments a stone’s throw away from each other show contrasting approaches to community consultation. First is Bedminster Green: "The point at which they started listening to us was too late

One of the main concerns about population growth in BS3 is the impact on local services already feeling the strain, a concern shared by Bristol South MP Karin Smyth.

Jaime Breitnauer lived in the area with her family until 2013, before moving away and returning in 2019 when there was a noticeable difference.

“We have been unable to register with a dentist since our return. We attempted to live car free but the bus service is now so appalling that we are unable to and have invested in an electric vehicle which is very expensive.

“My husband was recently very ill and we could not get an appointment after several days of trying,” she adds.

Parking has long been an issue in Southville, with streets on the edge of Residential Parking Zones filling up with parked cars. And with the closure to Malago Road combined with the introduction of the city’s Clean Air Zone, some streets in Windmill Hill have become rat runs for people driving into town.

Action Greater Bedminster

give shopping centre St Catherine’s Place a much-need facelift.

“It’s been a nightmare,” says Aaron Rhodes who works at East Street Fruit Market, explaining how building work has disrupted the business.

Call out

BS3 IN FOCUS

The shop, famous locally for Darren Jones the ‘singing greengrocer’, who announced he would be selling up after 30 years, is now under new management.

Rhodes says the business didn’t get any heads-up about the development.

“Now it’s going to be like this for two and a half years.”

“But once it’s done, it’ll be perfect for the road,” he adds.

Freeman believes new people coming to the area offer an “exciting opportunity” for places like East Street.

“I hope that we don't get swamped and we embrace it,” she says She points out wider implications for the city too. “Can we do it in a way that is more engaging? Then as a city we shift how we approach these things so that the community is more involved… rather than having stuff just happening to us.”•

The Cable wants to tell more stories from different parts of Bristol. That’s why we’re focusing on a different area in each edition.

Last time it was Lockleaze, now it’s BS3. If you live in the area, we want to hear from you so we can tell the stories that matter.

Have your say:

• What is most important to you in the development of BS3?

• What do you love about your area?

• What would you like to change about your area?

Scan the QR code or text/ WhatsApp: 07533

718547

Dyer says: "We've already seen 15% growth in the last 10 years. Now we're looking at 40% growth in the next 10 to 20 years. If we don't start to address the facilities that people need then we can end up with a very divided community.”

A boost for businesses?

In the heart of Bedminster is East Street, the rundown high street that has become well-known in recent years for its shuttered shops and need of rejuvenation. It’s currently being disrupted by the Bedminster Green developments, which will eventually

Bedminster’s East Street

The phone rang as I sat on my hospital bed, still bleeding from birth, terrified of the brand new baby lying next to me in his perspex crib.

“I’d like to arrange a video call with you to see how we can help,” said the kind voice of the mental health nurse on the line.

I’d given birth two days earlier, after being admitted to hospital to induce labour because of a psychiatric breakdown. Pregnancy was arduous and painful, but towards the end I started to spiral mentally.

psychiatrist, and specialist nursery nurse. I also began a 12-week course of dialectal behavioural therapy.

I’d had therapy in the past but I’d never trusted a therapist enough to speak openly to them. This time was different though. I was desperate.

‘The hardest thing that I’ve put myself through’ I built a rapport with the team, feeling safe enough, for the first time, to truly let down my guard. I don’t think I would have survived that period without their intervention.

council and, most importantly, local residents,” says English.

According to government data compiled by Action on Empty Homes, Bristol had 1,625 long-term empty homes in 2022, up from 1,108 in 2021.

Bristol City

Council investigates notorious property boss for potential breach of legal order

Landlord Mushtaq Ahmed was previously fined £3,000 and given 150 days to clean up three dilapidated buildings in Bristol – but there’s little sign of improvement

Alex King

Anotorious Bristol landlord who owns property worth millions is being investigated for a potential breach of a court order relating to three empty buildings that have been neglected for years.

Bristol City Council first issued Mushtaq Ahmed a community protection notice in March 2021, demanding he clean up three buildings in Bristol that had been defaced by graffiti and attracted fly-tipping. When no action was taken, the council took Ahmed to court. He appeared at Bristol Magistrates’ Court on 2 February last year.

Ahmed was fined £3,000 and given 150 days to put right the issues with the properties: the Kernow Audio & Sound building on Mina Road, St Werburgh’s, the former Gainsborough Square pub site in Lockleaze and the Hire Station on Church Road, St George. The Cable asked the council whether Ahmed had followed the court order. A

spokesperson said it was investigating him “for breach of a previous legal order”. The council can request to bring the case back to court if Ahmed fails to comply.

The Cable reported on Ahmed’s dilapidated buildings blighting Bristol’s high streets in 2021. Locals have complained about debris and graffiti and accused Ahmed of brazen property speculation, which he denies.

Land registry records show Gracewell Limited, of which Ahmed is the sole listed director, owns 15 properties in Bristol. But the landlord acknowledges he has more.

‘The building’s not been made safe’

Last November, St Werburgh’s residents awoke to find one of Ahmed’s buildings covered in big wooden boards. Local Green councillor Jude English believes the boards may be a last-ditch attempt by Ahmed to follow the legal order. “He was ordered to clean up, remove graffiti

and make the building safe,” she said.

“Instead Ahmed got a company to clean it and put up advertising boards, which is not what people wanted.”

Ahmed maintains he has followed the legal order. “The boards were put up to reduce the chance of further graffiti and fly tipping,” he said. There are also now ad boards in front of his property on Church Road.

English says Ahmed doesn’t have planning permission for the advertising boards. The council told the Cable it is investigating Ahmed for potential breaches of planning rules relating to the Kernow building.

Ahmed said the company that installed the boards would put in a planning application soon.

‘A dangerous eyesore’

Ahmed’s empty buildings have drawn particularly harsh criticism, given Bristol’s acute need for housing.

“Ahmed has repeatedly shown complete disrespect for the law, the

Action on Empty Homes puts the figure at 7,370 once you include things like short-term rentals. There are currently 19,000 Bristol households on the social housing waiting list.

Since 2020, owners of empty properties in Bristol have paid full council tax, double the standard rate if their properties are empty for two years or more, and triple rates if they are empty for five years.

Ahmed insists that he wants to develop the Kernow building, but claims squatters have thwarted him.

“When I bought it most of the roof on number 54 [next to Sonni’s shop] was missing. The first thing I did was to totally renew that roof,” he said.

He said squatters first moved in while contractors who were repairing the building went on holiday.

“Since then squatters have been in at least three more times and each time made things worse,” Ahmed said. “Now the building needs to be demolished – I want to put up a decent building here once I get planning.” The council’s planning portal doesn’t appear to show any planning applications submitted by the landlord.

Local MP Thangam Debbonaire welcomed the council’s investigation into Ahmed. “For many years, the abandoned Kernow building has been a dangerous eyesore,” she said.

“This rat-infested wreck sits in the heart of an otherwise charming part of Bristol – and it’s not just how it brings the neighbourhood down,” the MP added. “This plot could house many families. The current state of it is an affront to anyone who needs a home.

“I have pushed efforts to get this sorted over the years. I hope the council is successful. I know local people have had enough,” Debbonaire said. •

Just shy of 38 weeks, my husband rushed me to hospital in the middle of the night. I’d woken him at 3am with my trainers laced up, screaming that I was leaving to “get the baby out”. But by the time we arrived at the maternity unit, I was almost catatonic. Midwives tried to coax me to talk as tears poured down my face. I was medicated and prepared for induction the next day.

Paralysed by fear

This was my second baby. I’d suffered mental health symptoms with my first child too, but this was like nothing I’d experienced. I felt terrified. Of everything! Intrusive thoughts played on a loop in my head, leaving me paralysed by fear. I told my husband I felt as though I was going mad.

When I had my first child in 2016, there wasn’t a perinatal mental health (PMH) service in Bath where I lived. I got through that dark time with medication and my GP, but I never really processed it. This became apparent after my second child was born in 2021. Thankfully, there are now specialist NHS PMH community services everywhere in England, which provide care for women from conception until 12 months postpartum.

During my hospital stay I was monitored closely by a mental health midwife, who arranged a psychiatric evaluation, and for my care to be taken over in the community by the PMH service.

I was grateful, but wary. The fear of opening up to someone when you’ve just had a baby is real. A

2019 study by researchers at Kings College London found 30% of mothers withheld negative feelings about their mental health, for fear their child would be taken into care. I didn’t feel capable of being alone caring for our baby, but I still feared admitting this.

The PMH service assigned me a community psychiatric nurse,

Therapy wasn’t easy. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever willingly put myself through. I showed up every week and talked about trauma, past and present. I was able to admit my worst thoughts and fears – and believe me, they got pretty dark. I began obsessing about the feeling that I was ‘going mad’. I couldn’t sleep because I feared I’d harm my family during the night.

In June 2022, a year after I gave birth, I was beginning to feel better. Although I wasn’t fully recovered, it was time for me to be discharged. I had completed treatment and was considered well enough to be referred back to my GP.

There’s no right time to end a therapeutic relationship. I knew it was coming and yet I still didn’t feel prepared to lose these people, with whom I’d built a trusting relationship. It felt like grief.

I’ve since spoken informally to other professionals about this, one being hormone-informed therapist Emily Holloway, who said: “Therapy, when it works, is a powerful and significant relationship. Having a space where you are truly heard can be transformative –when that ends it may feel like grief… Therapy ends but the client’s bravery, vulnerability and strength is something that continues to grow and should be celebrated as the biggest success story.”

I hadn’t prepared for the impact such grief would have on my life.

Rationally, I understand why these relationships must end. Because how would I ever learn to cope alone if the NHS offered free indefinite support?

It’s been important to take things day by day, accepting how far I’ve come since that hospital admission. I better understand the work completed during therapy and the skills I learned. As Emily says, those skills are still valid, even without a team of people telling me so every week.

It’s been five months since I was discharged from the service. The sense of loss hasn’t gone altogether, but learning to appreciate the progress I’ve made is a huge step. I’d recommend therapy to everyone, because it really has changed my life for the better. •

“This plot could house many families. It’s current rat infested state is an affront to anyone who needs a home,”

The derelict building Ahmed has been ordered to clear up in St Werburghs

‘I needed therapy after I gave birth, but now I'm going it alone’

I experienced a mental health crisis while having my second child. Therapy saved me, but when it ended I felt lost Steph Cullen

Photo: Aphra Evans

Photo: David Griffiths

Bristol’s faltering, privatised bus services have left passengers frustrated, with driver shortages leading to fewer journeys on key routes

COVER STORY

Metro Mayor Dan Norris says he is open to Bristol taking greater public control over its bus services. But he is currently lagging behind other regional leaders pushing ahead with reforms.

As part of our Future of Cities solutions journalism series, we ask if franchising is the way to improve vital public transport

Tom Wall

he moment that finally broke Mirela Ferencz came at a cold, wet bus stop near her home in Brislington, south Bristol. She desperately needed to get to the sheltered housing where she was the only overnight carer for over 200 vulnerable elderly people. But her bus was late again.

“After waiting for more than an hour I was in tears,” she explains. “I didn’t know if it was going to turn up… I was thinking, ‘Shall I start walking or will I miss the bus?’ I had this really stressful feeling in my stomach.”

Mirela, 42, who has worked as a carer for 17 years, came to rely on the city’s bus network after her bike was damaged during an attempted theft. But delays, sudden on-route terminations, and dreaded noshow ‘ghost buses’ made her evening commute an energy-sapping lottery. It was the worst possible way to prepare for a 10-hour night shift.

“We’ve got people with Parkinson's, dementia and we've got end-of-life care. It is a big responsibility.

[The delay that night] was the last thing I needed and it wasn’t the first time,” she says.

Mirela is just one victim of the crisis engulfing Bristol’s bus network, which has left pupils missing schools, elderly people struggling to get to medical appointments, and workers routinely late for work.

In November, FirstGroup, the giant transport corporation that dominates the region’s buses via its First Bus division, admitted it could not meet its own timetable due to driver shortages and cancelled 1,450 buses in Bristol, reducing the frequency of many key routes across the city until at least April.

This comes after operators received £2bn in emergency support from the government to keep buses on the roads during the pandemic. Last year, bus firms – including FirstGroup – received another tranche of public funding to cope with the slow return of passengers to bus networks.

The city’s faltering, privatised service has been branded dysfunctional by increasingly frustrated passengers and local politicians. But could public control of the network by the region’s Labour metro mayor, Dan Norris, provide a route out of the chaos?

Metro mayors have the power to take charge of regional bus networks, drawing up timetables and contracting bus firms to run services in exchange for a set fee. This approach – known as bus franchising –for a long time only existed in London, but is gaining ground across the country. Five of the nine metro

mayors, including in Liverpool and West Yorkshire, are pushing ahead with bus franchising. Greater Manchester's high-profile metro mayor, Andy Burnham, is the closest to gaining control, with the first buses under public control due on the region’s roads by September.

This could mark the beginning of the end of Margaret Thatcher’s 37-year-long experiment in bus deregulation in large swathes of the country. Her radical reforms – which stripped councils of their control of bus networks, introduced on-road competition between operators, and led to the selloff of almost all municipal bus companies – were supposed to improve services and lower fares. But bus trips continued to decline, thousands of routes were cut and fares increased by 17% in real terms after 2010.

London, which was not covered by Thatcher's legislation, bucked the longstanding trend. The number of journeys made by bus rose during the era of deregulation by more than 90% before the pandemic emptied buses everywhere. London even held onto passengers when its bus funding fell sharply in the 80s and 90s – unlike other areas.

Bus franchising explained

Currently, our bus services are run by a private company, First Bus. Instead, bus franchising would give more control over services to our regional government – the West of England Combined Authority (WECA). It would mean private operators such as First would have to bid for contracts to deliver services, which would give Metro Mayor Dan Norris more power to set routes, timetables and make sure less popular but important services still run. The model, which allows greater public control, is common in Europe, exists in London and is now being explored in other regions of the UK, including Greater Manchester, Liverpool and West Yorkshire.

Here in Bristol, the future looks far less certain. Norris is the only Labour metro mayor who has not yet used formal powers to investigate the benefits of bringing the buses under public control. Instead, he insists he is keeping franchising under review, although he admits to the Cable it could take three years to reach a final decision, with the franchising process then taking a further three years to implement. In the meantime, Norris is relying on the government’s preferred enhanced partnership scheme, which encourages mayors to strike wideranging agreements with bus firms, covering everything from bus frequencies to ticketing.

Yet local campaigners, MPs and councillors across Bristol are stepping up the pressure on Norris. In December, Bristol councillors voted for a motion urging him to begin the legal process of bringing the network back under public control. The city’s MPs and Bristol’s mayor, Marvin Rees have made similar calls. An open letter from campaigners demanding a London-style model had attracted almost 1,700 signatures at the time of writing.

“At the moment [bus companies] are not responding to the clear crisis in the service,” says Rob Bryher from transport campaign group WESTACT, which initiated the open letter. “The fact is, bus companies don’t provide anything that doesn’t make a profit. That's why we’re in this situation and why we’re calling for franchising. It's the only tool that is available to us to get some measure of control over the companies running buses in the region.”

The partnership deal Norris has negotiated with First Bus was due to be signed off in mid February, as the Cable went to press, but campaigners argue it

Photo: Colin Moody

leaves the network and fare income in the hands of private firms, who can veto any changes they don’t like. Matthew Topham, from campaign group, We Own it, argues these voluntary agreements rarely work. “We have had decades of partnership schemes, and we have had decades of decline,” he says.

Franchised bus services are common in Europe, especially in Scandinavia. According to a report by the Urban Transport Group, a network of cityregion transport authorities, franchising bus services in Denmark, Norway and Sweden – instead of full privatisation like we had in the UK – reduced cost and increased quality. This allowed savings to be reinvested into improving services.

Supporters of franchising claim it would allow the mayor to design a bus network that serves the whole city region, rather than bus firms cherrypicking the most profitable routes, and demanding councils pay for any additional services. Crucially, Norris could use fare revenues from busy routes into the city centre to subside quieter routes that deliver wider social, economic or environmental goals, such as connecting areas of high unemployment to workplaces, or getting the elderly to doctors' surgeries, or linking up outlying suburbs.

writing there were 250 bus driver vacancies in the region. Across the entire South West, one in 10 driver jobs is unfilled.

London's experience suggests regulation could help in the long run. Unite, a union that represents bus drivers across the country, including London and Bristol, argues regulated bus systems have a better record of retaining drivers, which is as much of a problem as recruiting them.

Surveys suggest drivers are leaving because of low pay, poor conditions and long hours. “Drivers in London are far better paid,” says Bob Morton, Unite’s national bus organiser. “There is a rate for the job so everyone driving a bus is on at least the same basic pay. That all came about through franchising. The fact is, I don’t see any major shortages in London.” Other metro mayors are already using franchising to ensure drivers are treated better. Burnham has written into contracts that bus companies must meet good work standards, including the real living wage, and agreeing to negotiate pay and conditions with unions. Similar discussions are understood to be taking place in Liverpool.

Topham says Norris could go further to address the region’s driver shortage if he controlled the network, such as by rewarding firms with contract extensions if they improve pay and conditions.

as a self-governing crown dependency, managed to turn its struggling, lightly regulated bus service around by introducing franchising in 2013. The move led to a 50% increase in passengers before the pandemic, new routes, modern bus stops, ticketing systems, higher frequencies, and even reduced government subsidies.

While Jersey is smaller and obviously more rural than Bristol, its experience shows the right kind of regulation can achieve impressive results outside the capital. “The bus service was not fulfilling the requirements of the resident population – it was geared towards visitors,” explains Craig Miller, a public transport officer on the island, who helped steer the franchising project. “During peak months [the bus company] would make absolutely as much money as possible from shuttling people from hotels and guest houses to beaches and tourist attractions – it was clearly a 'make hay while the sun shines' operation – and maintain a skeletal service, the least they could get away with, during the winter.” Miller and his colleagues specified in the franchising contract that the new service would need to run regular services throughout the year connecting the entire island, with profits shared between the operator and the government. “If you were to take a commercial view, you wouldn't run buses to the north of the island, but there's a social need because people don't always have a choice on how they travel,” adds Tristan Dodd, Jersey’s director of transport. “We knew they could use the profits from the south to fund services in the north.” The expanded network has transformed the lives of many residents. Nearly one in three disabled people believe the bus service has improved their mobility. Matt uses buses to travel to art classes and a nature conservation project run by Mencap. “I don’t have to wait for lifts now from my mum,” he says. His mother, Sue, says it has given him more freedom. “My son now regularly uses the bus – it forms a very important part of his independence and makes a positive difference to his life.”

Since the pandemic, driver shortages have had almost no impact on the island, says Miller. Bristol’s buses have long been underperforming in ways that would be familiar to Jersey residents. The region’s bus improvement plan shows nearly a quarter of non-frequent bus services were late in the West of England before driver shortages emerged – above the national average. The network lacks enough orbital routes linking up suburbs, cross-city centre services and fast routes, with limited stops, which can rival car journey times. And rural areas are poorly served, with some villages only having one or two buses a week.

While bus use rose in the West of England in the years before the pandemic, it remained below other metropolitan areas and below the national average. None of this appears to have affected FirstGroup’s profits, which grew by almost a quarter from £36.6m in 2021 to £45.2m in 2022.

FirstGroup profits

2021:

However, Topham points out that other areas are acting much more quickly than this. For example, South Yorkshire is planning a turnaround from first investigating feasibility to implementation in less than three years.

2022:

He thinks franchising might help speed up the current “zombie-like and slow” way of managing the network, but he has serious reservations: “I am interested in franchising, because theoretically it gives me more options to control and shape bus services of the future. But I want to be sure and confident about that because if I take full responsibility… that means that me and the taxpayer are liable if it goes wrong… it’s a big decision.”

But would any of this deal with the chronic shortage of drivers in the West of England? At the time of

London may be the best-known place to have made a success of franchising, but there are others. Jersey, which was not covered by Thatcher’s legislation

Profit margins fall by half in franchised systems, according to research. The money destined for shareholders can instead be used in all sorts of ways to improve the network. Manchester, for example, is rumoured to be planning a London-style £2 ‘hopper fare’ for unlimited journeys within an hour.

There are limits to the franchising model, however. Profits – albeit smaller – continue to flow to shareholders, and buses are still vulnerable to the vagaries of government spending decisions. Funding has been cut in London, impacting 18 routes in the capital next year. There have also been driver strikes over below-inflation pay offers. And betterrun services will still be affected by congestion on Bristol’s roads until space on roads is reallocated away from cars.

Bristol Labour councillor, Tim Rippington, believes the public would still be getting a raw deal under franchising. “Private companies will still be making a profit… you still have to pay them more than you would have to pay if you were running services yourself,” he explains.

The city, he says, should keep its options open, because it may be possible to set up a publicly owned bus company. Labour is committed to ending the ban on areas establishing their own municipal bus companies – and if polling is correct the party could be in power by 2025.

While most council-owned bus companies were sold off after deregulation, some survived. There are 10 publicly owned operators across the UK, including award-winning services in Nottingham and Reading. They can reinvest profits usually destined to shareholders, with one study noting council-owned Reading Buses is able to invest an additional £3m annually.

Norris says he is “very interested” in franchising but admits a decision is unlikely to come until 2026 – after the next election. “I will be in a strong position to make a decision in probably three years' time,” he explains. “That's how long realistically it will take because that's when the data will come through from Andy [Burnham] and maybe some other metro mayor areas.”

Even though he is the only Labour metro mayor who has not begun formally looking at franchising, Norris insists he’s “not the odd one out” and the move is “under constant review”. He adds he can currently get internal company data without formally starting the process to look at franchising. The political makeup of the region and lack of revenue from a tram network makes franchising more risky, he claims. He adds that Conservativecontrolled South Gloucestershire Council is opposed to bus regulation and could block any plan.“I need unanimity and they would vote against it,” he says. Norris says publicly owned bus services could be a better model for the region. “Alternatively, we can wait for the Labour government to create genuine state control, which might be what's necessary.”

But he sees the bus driver shortage as the main issue. “I need bus drivers. Even if I threw the [franchising] switch tomorrow, and it won’t be tomorrow… it would take three or four years before you could implement it.”

He has other novel ideas to link up areas poorly served by public transport to bus and rail terminals in the region this year. In the summer people will be able to call on-demand mini buses funded by government money.

First Bus says driver shortages are affecting the whole industry but that the problem is particularly acute in the West of England. It says it continues to operate 95% of all bus journeys and it has invested in modernising its fleet and lower fares. First says it is making “significant progress” with recruitment and punctuality is “challenging” due to congestion.

“We have a track record of working in partnership with Bristol City Council, and now the West of England Combined Authority, to deliver a better offer… And our pre-Covid patronage growth was evidence of what can be achieved despite the challenging traffic conditions,” says a spokesperson. Back in Brislington, Mirela is getting to the end of her story. She eventually managed to get to work thanks to another passenger stranded at the stop, who shared her Uber ride to the city centre. “Her kindness warmed my heart when I was so upset,” Mirela recalls.

But she cannot rely on the kindness of strangers every week – so she now cycles 14 miles to and from her shifts on a new bike. Mirela has a stark message for Dan Norris as he weighs up what to do about Bristol’s bus chaos: “How would you feel if you were in my shoes? How would you feel worrying and stressed about getting to work – not once or twice but many times?” •

Bus driver vacancies

Driver jobs unfilled across the South West

Driver shortages in West of England

Mirela Ferencz, 42, has been unable to get to her carer jobs due to unreliable buses

Photo: Izzy de Wattripont

We know people need more than just to hear what’s wrong – we need to know how we can fix it, and build cities fit for the future. That’s why we’re not only producing independent, investigative journalism on the future of Bristol, we’re also running public events so you can learn more, hear from experts, and contribute your own experience to the conversation.

THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORT

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As part of our solutions journalism project, the Future of Cities, we're looking at transport.

'PEOPLE ARE FED UP WITH THIS': WELCOME TO THE LAWRENCE HILL LIDO

Heavy rain inevitably means flooding in the Lawrence Hill roundabout underpass, a key pedestrian route connecting Easton, Lawrence Hill and Old Market.

The underpass was renamed the Lawrence Hill lido on Google Maps in January after this winter’s bout of downpours had already caused weeks-long flooding. The Newtown/Old Market tunnel is particularly bad, becoming blocked by a large pool of very deep standing water when it rains.

More than a decade of problems have been caused by tree roots damaging the tunnels’ underground drainage pipes. Bristol City Council says a fix to the issue is in the pipeline, with work to clear the flooding and repair pipes due to begin at the end of January as the Cable was going to press. But given it’s been an issue over so many years, locals worry the issue is not a priority for the local authority.

Lawrence Hill’s Green councillor Yassin Mohamud said it’s “insulting” that the council has “ignored the issue for so long”, and that people are fed up with the “delays and excuses”. •

Colin Moody moodycolin

Misconduct! Rogue landlord turns to Airbnb after fleecing tenants of their deposits

Thomas Flight has been convicted of a series of offences against his previous tenants but his properties are now on the short-term let market

Sean Morrison

When Sarah* wanted to know if her rental deposit was protected, and why her energy costs were so high, she was shut down with accusations that she was paranoid.

The property agent managing Sarah’s flat in St Paul’s began sending her abusive and intimidating emails.

“May I ask if you’re taking any medication or drugs that may have [a] side effect of paranoia,” read one email. “[She] is a very unstable and dangerous little girl or she has mental health issues,” read another sent to Sarah’s boyfriend, who she shared the flat with.

“The whole thing was just so horrible and confusing,” says Sarah, who rented one of seven flats in her landlord’s Portland Square property between 2016 and 2017. “In the end I did actually end up being paranoid… they were gaslighting us every step of the way.”

Her landlord’s name was Thomas Flight. She didn’t know this at the time, because he was hiding behind aliases and fake addresses, deploying ‘agents’ who would intimidate his tenants into paying maintenance fees, before withholding their deposits.

The 56-year-old businessman, who owns and lives on the Miss Conduct pleasure yacht docked in Bristol Harbour, was convicted in January of four consumer protection offences against his tenants between 2019 and 2020.

Flight was ordered to pay £37,000 in fees and costs, but was not banned from letting properties in future.

Seven of his nine flats in Portland Square are now on the short-term lets market, rented out on Airbnb.

A Cable investigation has found that his reckless and misleading practices may have been deployed against more than those tenants whose cases were heard in court. Some of them, including Sarah, are still out of pocket.

We also found that some guests who book Flight’s Airbnb properties have experienced issues having security deposits returned to them.

‘Endless amount of fines’

Olly says he was one of the “lucky ones”. He and a group of friends rented Flight’s penthouse apartment in Portland Square between 2016 and 2017. They encountered “aggressive” agents who sent “bizarre” and “sometimes threatening” emails.

Under their tenancy agreement, Olly and his housemates were liable to pay as much as £25 for a single phone call to the property maintenance line, and £15 to send one email. By the time they moved out they had been charged £5,370 worth of damages and fines, which they refused to pay.

“We had an issue with the gas hob – the knob broke and the gas was permanently on – and I thought, fuck, I need an actual number to deal with this quickly,” he says. “This is what led on to the endless amount of fines for using that number.”

He says the £25 fine for the phone call was doubled every day it wasn’t paid.

After Olly enquired about the return of their deposit, the agent demanded he provide an onward address to

post a cheque, threatening to contact their employers if they didn’t do so.

Olly’s housemate informed the agent they did not have an onward address as they were yet to secure a new tenancy. The agent accused them of lying and taunted them: “Let the games begin… You are out of the flat now and play by my rules and not yours.”

Olly says that unlike other tenants, their deposit was eventually returned, but the ordeal “hugely affected” his mental health at the time.

The agents who handled Olly’s tenancy were from a company named Landlord Support Alliance Bristol (LSA). Its website no longer exists online, and the Cable was unable to trace an official representative of the firm.

Olly and his housemates were unable to connect the LSA, which claimed to act as an intermediary between tenant and landlord, to Flight. Like Flight’s other tenants, they remained unaware that he was their landlord.

The LSA’s controversial tenancy agreements were the subject of a BBC investigation in 2019. In a statement at the time, the LSA insisted the charges for phone calls and emails were “legal, upfront and clear”.

But most of these charges were soon made unlawful by the Tenant Fees Act (2019). The act banned landlords and letting agents from charging unreasonable fees for things like requesting references, administration or credit checks. The offences Flight was convicted of in January, however, did not relate to fees. He was prosecuted for misleading and reckless commercial practices that are unlawful under Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (2008), which safeguard consumers against misleading trading practices and aggressive sales tactics.

Luxury Airbnbs

One of Flight’s seven luxury Airbnb apartments in Portland Square is a penthouse suite which can set guests back almost £600 per night. There have been calls for regulation of the shortterm and holiday lets market

in Bristol. Past reporting by the Cable shows that landlords in the city are cashing in on Airbnb lets at inflated prices, while renters have limited access to affordable homes.

An analysis of the reviews left on Airbnb for Flight’s properties in Portland Square showed that while his company is raking it in from holiday lets, some guests are also being subjected to fees and charges that appear unreasonable.

“The host also made a claim for money from us for things that were already damaged… and claiming £70 just to move some mirrors that we’d needed to move into the bedrooms as they didn’t have adequate mirrors in those rooms,” one review from August last year reads.

And it’s not just Flight’s Portland Square apartments that are on the short-term lets market.

In May 2021, Louisa booked an Airbnb lodge in Frome for herself and a group of friends. They were unable to go on the trip – coronavirus lockdown restrictions tightened – so she requested to change the date of their booking but the agent refused.

The agent also denied her the return of her £700 deposit. When she tried to escalate her claim, Louisa says the owners of the lodge denied

Maxin Limited, which is owned and managed by Flight, and is the same business in which some of his longerterm tenants paid their deposits into.

‘It was so exhausting, I just wanted it to be over’

The address for the lodge in Frome was the same given to Sarah when she enquired about her landlord’s contact details.

Her property agent had demanded she stop making complaints about her flat because her £1,200 deposit had already been “gobbled up” by administration fees for her maintenance enquiries.

After ending her tenancy, she contacted the Deposit Protection Service (DPS) and was told that because her landlord refused to use its services she would need to pursue her deposit in court.

Sarah said she sent a court order to an address given to her, but never got a reply and she gave up.

“Thinking back, by the end of it I was so exhausted and just wanted it to be over,” says Sarah, who, five years later, still hasn’t had her deposit back.

Councils lack the power to take action

In a statement following his court case, Bristol City Council said that Flight had not been banned from letting properties because the offences he pleaded guilty to were not banning order offences under the Housing and Planning Act 2016.

Tom Renhard, the local authority’s cabinet member for housing, said: “Mr Flight took advantage of tenants and that is simply not acceptable. We will continue to do all we can to pursue unscrupulous landlords where evidence of criminal exploitation is found.”

In January, Bristol councillors committed to introducing a public database of enforcement notices given to landlords who break rules, if the government doesn’t bring in a national landlord register

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, tells the Cable: “The massive demand for rentals coupled with the lack of proper regulation means private renting can seem like the Wild West.”

She adds: “Sadly, as we see through our services, it’s not uncommon for would-be renters to be asked to cough up unreasonable fees, or for rogue landlords to try and unfairly pocket people’s deposits.”

Flight refused several requests for comment on the issues raised in this article. •

*Names changed to protect identity.

An Airbnb ad for Thomas Flight’s Portland Square penthouse

Landlord Flight at the harbour

Protesters recently gathered outside Flight's yacht

Exclusive: Local police paying out damages to protesters on hundreds of claims

Avon and Somerset police is counting the cost of recent protest crackdowns as the force’s payoffs to the public are rising dramatically

Jack Barton

Over the past four years, Avon and Somerset Police (ASP) has paid out hundreds of claims for damages, as the force came under fire for its misuse of Covid legislation and approach to protest rights, the Bristol Cable can reveal. According to records obtained under Freedom of Information laws, ASP paid damages on 77 claims in the calendar year to September 2022, paying out nearly £200,000 in the first nine months of that year alone. The force paid out more than £827,000 over the nearly four year-period, with a spike in 2020,

when it paid out over £360,000 in damages on 86 claims.

Activists and campaigners said the sharp rise in payouts tallies with their experience of police conduct during a period in which UK police were handed sweeping powers to enforce lockdown restrictions, and faced widespread protests. Campaigners said the figures show ASP has substantial work to do to rebuild community trust.

An incident outside a hearing in 2021 of the Colston Four – the protesters who tore down a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol city centre during a Black Lives Matter protest – is illustrative

of the failures of the past few years, according to community activists.

‘They wanted to arrest us’

On 25 January 2021, during a pre-trial hearing of the Colston Four, Taus Larsen rode his bike toward Bristol Magistrates Court where the hearing was taking place, stopped to speak briefly to a friend, and was arrested by ASP.

“They weren’t up for any discussion,” he told the Cable. “They wanted to arrest us. Like they wanted to make a point of it, almost as a warning to other people who were there – anyone we can justify arresting, arrest them.”

Larsen said he spoke to two officers and agreed to leave the area, but before he had the chance to do so he was handcuffed and taken to a station where he went through several waiting rooms before spending hours in a cell.

“It felt like they were keeping us off the streets while any demo might be happening,” he said, adding that as this was at the height of the third coronavirus lockdown, it was particularly stressful “being cooped up for hours in places where you had no control over the sterility”.

As the four activists were inside the court for their part in tearing down the statue, four people, including Larsen, 43 at the time, Rowland Dye, 68, Paula Richardson, 60, and Rosalind Martin, 59, were arrested for showing solidarity with them.

Three months later, all would receive damages for wrongful arrest and Avon and Somerset Police admitted its action rested on a “misunderstanding of the legal effect” of coronavirus regulations.

The force refused to provide a year-by-year breakdown of the types of claim it paid out for, saying this risked breaching confidentiality of the claimants. But 26 of the claims it paid over nearly four years were for false or unlawful arrest or detention, which Larsen and the other demonstrators were compensated for.

Protest crackdown

Across the UK during the lockdowns, the police’s enforcement of Covid regulations came under scrutiny from campaigners as well as the wider public, particularly when the regulations were used to restrict protest rights.

Most notably criticised was the Met Police for its heavy-handed crackdown on a vigil held for Sarah Everard, killed by an off-duty police officer. However, ASP was the first force to formally apologise for misusing Covid regulations following its settlement with the Colston Four solidarity demonstrators outside Bristol Magistrates Court.

The figures obtained by the Cable paint a wider picture about the force’s apparent failures while its powers were extended.

During 2021, Bristol saw several ‘Kill the Bill’ protests – demonstrations against the Government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill (now Act), which contained restrictions on protest rights as well as measures affecting the rights of Gypsy and Traveller communities, and new stop-and-search powers.

Bristol had not-long seen the toppling of the Colston statue, the climax of the UK’s most high-profile Black Lives Matter demonstration,

during a global wave of anti-racism protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in the US in May 2020. ASP’s approach to demonstrations over this period was criticised on multiple fronts. In April 2021, at least 62 protesters were reportedly injured as ASP deployed heavyhanded anti-riot tactics against Bristolians who took to the streets to protest the draconian PCSC Bill. The force then claimed that officers had sustained broken bones due to violence from the Kill the Bill demonstrators, which it later emerged was untrue. Around the same time it was accused of abuse of power for targeting young women it suspected of being activists, using undercover officers.

An All-Party Parliamentary Group concluded that while a small number of protesters were violent, ASP used force disproportionately – including using batons and dogs on peaceful protesters, and unnecessary force on journalists, legal observers and medics.

Emily Apple, from police monitoring group Netpol, which submitted evidence to the inquiry, told the Cable that throughout the Kill the Bill protests, ASP had “behaved in a violent and repressive way with no accountability”.

“The behaviour of Avon and Somerset Police demonstrates exactly why the Kill the Bill movement was needed – the police don’t need more powers as they frequently abuse the powers they already have,” she said. But the force also came under fire from politicians for supposedly being too lenient with protesters. The thenHome Secretary, Priti Patel, appeared on Sky News to demand that those responsible for bringing down the Colston statue were pursued, and reportedly demanded an explanation from ASP for why it had not done more to protect the statue.

Stark figures show need for police to ‘get house in order’

The hearing for the Colston Four was scheduled during the height of the third national lockdown, and ASP acted by issuing a blanket ban on protests surrounding it, which the force would later admit was unlawful.

The perception from the four people arrested outside the court that day was that they were targeted in response to political pressure and because they were those most obviously demonstrating. Larsen had played music on the back of his bike; Dye held up a placard; and Richardson and Martin had

chalk to write solidarity messages on the courthouse steps.

Gus Silverman, a lawyer who has acted for a number of activists wrongfully arrested by ASP in recent years, told the Cable that ASP has been “distinctly patchy” in its adherence to human rights principles while policing protests.

“The recent experience of our clients indicates Avon and Somerset regularly falls short of its obligation to facilitate the right to peaceful protest,” he said, adding that ASP recently settled proposed damages with a further five of his clients for breaching their human rights and assault, after forcibly clearing them from College Green in March 2021.

John Pegham, founder of Bristol Copwatch, told the Cable: “Compensation payout increases are significant because this shows us that the police are not learning from their mistakes and instead are allowing officers to continually overstep the proverbial mark and infringe on our rights and civil liberties.”

“It’s down to the police to regain public trust and confidence, and it’s down to Chief Constable Sarah Crew to put her house in order,” said Pegham. “The us and them divide grows greater every single day.”

An ASP spokesperson said: “To maintain public confidence, we believe it is important to acknowledge and understand where failures have occurred and the public rightly expect that process to be as open and transparent as possible.”

“This includes some of the claims we received relating to our response to public protests during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. Where appropriate we have privately and publicly apologised, accepting that in those specific cases our officers made an honest misinterpretation of the recently introduced legislation around the important fundamental right of protest.” •

“The behaviour of Avon and Somerset Police demonstrates exactly why the Kill the Bill movement was needed”

Kill the Bill protestors in Bristol, late March 2021

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and its partners stopped offering walkin testing. Concerns about monkeypox and an ongoing need to shield vulnerable people from Covid mean this has continued. The increase in athome testing is creating new concerns around wait times.

Sexual health service workers say long waits for kits are partly down to supply issues. UHBW, which says it distributes 1,000 kits a week, blamed delays on supply chain problems that had “been resolved”.

Regardless, issues like these present a further barrier to patients, says ‘T’, a volunteer coordinator at a relationships education charity: “People are going to have sex, so we need to make it easy for them to be doing so safely.” Bristol’s rate of new sexually transmitted infections was already above the national average in 2020, before testing changes came in.

It’s doubly important to make testing as easy as possible for people who are already reluctant. Sexual health workers say patients are predominantly white, with women more likely to book than men, who “only come in if they have symptoms”.

Testing kits arrive in plain envelopes. Even so, fears around having to rely on a test being sent to a home address mean young people, ethnic minorities, sex workers and the queer community could benefit from a walk-in option.

Frustrations with at-home sexual health tests

Since the pandemic, walk-in sexual health services in Bristol have given way to home testing kits – but some people using them are complaining of long delays and inconclusive results

Andy Leake

“ I

had to prick each finger and squeeze the life out of them to fill up the tube.” Zara*, 28, from Horfield, is describing her experience last summer using an at-home sexual health testing kit. Since the pandemic, Bristol’s walk-in services, where you could get samples taken by a nurse without an appointment, have been replaced by these kits. You take your blood, swab and urine samples and post them off. Zara sent hers back the same day and got the results back around two weeks later – inconclusive. “In total the process took around six weeks –and I still had no answers about my

sexual health, which was incredibly frustrating,” she says.

I was inspired to write this article after my own recent experience with Bristol’s sexual health services. As a queer man I’m often told our community is the most vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases, from Hep B to HIV to monkeypox.

Like Zara, my kit was slow to arrive, meaning the process from ordering it to getting my results was about seven weeks. Others have shared similar experiences with me. This is quite a wait when you're sexually active –potentially enough to stop some people getting tested.

Since 2017, sexual health services in Bristol have been commissioned jointly by the council and its counterparts in South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.

University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (UHBW) delivers a service called Unity Sexual Health at a cost of about £8.4 million a year, in partnership with other specialist organisations. These include Brook, which delivers sexual health support for young people, and HIV charity the Terence Higgins Trust.

Recently there’s been a national shift towards online and phone services, and home-testing kits. It has been driven both by the pandemic and by funding cuts at a time of rising demand, with a recent study warning that services are at “breaking point”. Government funding for sexual health services was cut by over £1bn between 2015/16 and 2020/21, with councils struggling to make up the shortfall.

Walk-in services are not perfect.

Having to queue in a public place can add stress to a visit many people already find uncomfortable. Even so, sexual health service workers, who asked to remain anonymous, tell me that some people – especially young people – prefer the ease of walk-ins.

But with the onset of Covid, Unity

Small but powerful gestures

Things are by no means all bad in Bristol's sexual health services. I had the benefit of the pastoral side of visiting Unity at an in-person appointment I booked after I’d struggled, like Zara, to draw enough blood at home. During the test, I was asked if I felt safe and secure with my sexual partners. This small gesture took me aback: it’s something I haven’t been asked during a sexual health screening before. A question like this could be potentially lifesaving.

Unity is also trialling vending machines, so people can pick up tests instead of having them delivered. There are two in Bristol, at Hamilton House and the Watershed; one each in South Gloucestershire and North Somerset. More would be better.

With Bristol’s sexual health services due to be recommissioned from 2024, the council has been assessing the city’s needs and inequalities, including gaps – with access to services identified as a “key issue”. While a cabinet report from last year warns the “affordability of meeting this need” could have an impact on the budget available, now is the time to ensure these vital services are as accessible as possible for all. •

Premier Cinema Orchestra’. Although using the title ‘Herr’ was perhaps an unfortunate choice.

Falsely accused and cruelly punished

The Coliseum was by now very popular. The management advertised that it was only a penny tram-ride from Zetland Road, and a penny busride from Sussex Place. Admission would cost as little as sixpence. There were continuous performances throughout the afternoon and evening, and afternoon teas were served each day.

A Charlie Chaplin film was playing at the venue on the day war broke out in August 1914. Later that month, In the Bishop’s Carriage came out. This was an eagerly awaited film starring Mary Pickford, actress and later a founder of the Motion Picture Academy. In it, she played a woman who, according to one review, is ‘falsely accused and cruelly punished’. At much the same time, Anton Blazer found himself in a similar position. The letter claimed to have been found lying in Small Street, not far from the Coliseum, was addressed to Anton, and it contained details of a plan to bomb Horfield Barracks, which was only a penny tram-ride from his home.

Hounded out of town by a hoax

Dutch pianist Anton Blazer had made a name for himself playing at the Coliseum Picture Theatre on Park Row – until a curious sequence of events at the outbreak of the First World War

David Hewitt

It all began with a letter someone claimed to have found lying in the middle of Small Street in Bristol city centre, in the first few days of the First World War.

Anton Blazer was a famous Dutch pianist who had settled in Bristol. But this letter would turn his life upside down and expose the xenophobic sentiment swirling around the city at the start of the war.

Blazer had already been a success when he arrived in Britain several years earlier. A talented pianist, he had studied at the Conservatory in Rotterdam and gone on a successful concert tour of the Continent. Now

in his thirties, he had set up home in Bristol with the woman who would one day be his wife.

Their home was in the Clifton area of the city, on Woodland Road, in Tyndall’s Park, and Anton also had rooms in a lofty old house on Exeter Buildings in Redland. It was there that he advertised himself as a ‘Professor of the Piano’, giving music lessons and the odd recital.

By the autumn of 1912, he also had more regular employment, as the pianist at the Coliseum Picture Theatre. It was only a short stroll from his home, on the corner of Woodland Road and Park Row, across

Arches and balustrades and doors as high as a house

Now used by Bristol University, the Coliseum had elegant arches and balustrades, and doors as high as a house. There were seats for nearly 500 people, and a commissionaire in a gold-braided coat and cap marched up and down outside.

It had opened only a few weeks before, in a building that also housed a skating rink, a café, and an exhibition hall. At first, Anton simply accompanied the silent films. But gradually he became more confident and his fame grew, and he was asked to perform during the intervals as well. Before long, he had been joined by a small band of musicians to accompany him, as he played his own arrangements of Bizet and Liszt.

None of this escaped the attention of the press. “The music at the Coliseum has always been a special feature,” one newspaper wrote, “and under the direction of Herr Blazer it has been brought to a particularly high standard.”

And as his fame grew, so did the size and reputation of his band.

On the eve of the Great War, it was being billed as ‘Herr Anton Blazer’s

The authorities were duly alerted, and a rumour went round Bristol that Anton was really German and merely passing himself off as Dutch. He was arrested at his studio in Redland, taken to the police station on Bridewell Street and brought before the court next door.

Under laws hastily introduced in the previous few days, he was accused of failing to register as an alien and also accused of offences connected to the plot described in the letter.

‘A dastardly thing to do at a time like this’

Anton was locked up for nearly a fortnight before contact was finally made with the Rotterdam police, and his brother travelled over to Bristol at great risk to himself. The evidence of those witnesses proved crucial. When he next appeared in court, the prosecution conceded that Anton was Dutch, not German, and that there had been no need for him to register. The prosecution also accepted that the letter had been a hoax and announced that no evidence was to be offered against him. The magistrate said Anton was free to leave and his solicitor called for the real culprit to be brought to book, saying: “This was a dastardly thing to do at such a time as the present.”

No one ever explained who had sent the letter, or why, and within days, Anton left Britain and returned to Holland. In the years that followed, he would become an eminent performer, teacher and composer of music, with some of the music he composed ending up in films. He died in Rotterdam just after the Second World War. The Coliseum was briefly used to assemble Bristol soldiers who would one day fight on the Somme. It then became an aeroplane factory for a time, before becoming a rink and a cinema once again. It was later turned into a ballroom, playing host

to the South African–British singer and jazz guitarist, Al Bowlly.

The place was badly damaged by German bombs in the ‘Bristol Blitz’ of November 1940, which also saw the Prince’s Theatre across the road destroyed. What remains of it has been used by Bristol University for several decades, and it now forms part of the Merchant Venturers Building. • David Hewitt is a lawyer and a writer. His latest book – Gold, Violet, Black, Crimson, White – is about another Great War court case, provoked by a silent film many people considered obscene.

“The letter contained details of a plan to bomb Horfield Barracks”

from the popular and prestigious Prince’s Theatre.

In the Bishop’s Carriage, which played at the Coliseum

Horfield Barracks, 'target' of a hoax bomb threat

Park Row’s Coliseum Picture Theatre

If walls could talk, few would have as many stories of hell-raising and hedonism as those associated with nightlife. From Grace Jones straddling horses in Studio 54 to UK warehouses where ravers leave with muddy minds and trainers, nocturnal spaces are often seen as dark lairs rife with excess. But perspectives surrounding nightclubs are evolving at pace. They have always been places to let go, where you can dance the night away. But they are also precious spaces where social groups congregate and marginalised communities can flourish – sometimes with wildly influential results, such as Chicago’s house scene, which sprang up in the city’s Black and queer communities.

Closer to home, recent research carried out by Bristol’s Motion club highlights the positive effects clubbing can have. Of 318 respondents to the survey, 85% said nightclubs help them connect with people during the dark winter months, with 88% replying that attending nightclubs improves their mental wellbeing.

“For those who don’t understand nightlife and the night-time economy, it can be easy to see the negative press and get the wrong idea about the culture and community it creates,” says Motion director, Martin Page. “But for those who do interact with and understand it, nightlife can be a way of escaping life’s troubles and resetting the equilibrium.”

You might expect that response from someone with a business interest in the local night-time economy. Yet myriad academic studies have demonstrated the benefits of music for mental wellbeing – and the hole left by the absence of clubs in our lives during Covid lockdowns have shown their importance to be unequivocal.

“There is something inherent about dancing with your community and how good it makes you feel,” says Carly Heath, Bristol’s night-time economy advisor. “Mental health and wellbeing is about releasing endorphins. Some people go for a walk or a jog. For others, standing and dancing in front of a thumping sound system does all that and more.”

A nocturnal landscape under threat

CULTURE WHEN YOU DANCE WITH OTHER PEOPLE, AMAZING THINGS HAPPEN

Over the last decade, nightlife in Bristol and across the UK has been buffeted by crises. Night Time Industry Association findings published in November 2022 revealed that 123 nightclubs closed down over the previous nine months, a rate of 14 a month – and higher than during the Covid pandemic.

Club closures are common (local losses over recent years include Blue

Mountain and The Basement). The NTIA statistics counted 1,068 nightclubs in the UK, down from 1,446 in December 2019 before the pandemic.

The pressure continues to be acute in terms of the cost of living crisis sucking money from clubs and their crowds.

Statistics for the third quarter of 2022 from the Bristol Business Improvement District show there was a 13% decrease in night-time spending at clubs and bars compared with the previous quarter. Bristol’s night-time economy is big business too, supporting over 91,000 jobs, a third of the city’s workforce.

According to Page, when Motion reopened in July 2021 it saw “an unparalleled thirst” among clubbers to get back on dancefloors – but this was only sustainable for so long. As the middle of 2022 approached, the number of attendees began dwindling, with venues only recently regaining some momentum in attracting crowds.

“The vast majority of tickets are bought within the final days leading up to the show,” says Page on changes in consumer habits. “We believe this is down to customers still not having 100% confidence in events taking place and concerns about cashflow, wanting to be sure their friends can come along before fully committing.

“This is the aftermath of shows having to be moved or cancelled over the past few years due to changing restrictions and, of course, these uncertain financial times.”

Dr Beate Peter, a cultural sociologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, says that alongside financial concerns, the pandemic has created social challenges for clubbers.

“For a generation of young people who I teach, many no longer know the best ways to form relationships because of the impact of the pandemic,” she says. “There are huge levels of anxiety about socialising.”

According to Peter, it’s on the dancefloor where some feel free to be themselves and able to connect with others. Many struggled when these spaces were removed.

“For those who suffer from anxieties and verbalising them, clubbing is an opportunity to engage with others without even having to speak,” Peter says.

Why is dancing good for us?

Dr Peter Lovatt, a dance psychologist and co-founder of the Movement in Practice (MiP) Academy, is an expert on the benefits of dancing for wellbeing. He says nightclubs are beneficial as they stimulate four areas in us – social, thinking, emotional and physical, otherwise known as STEP.

“We know that when people move together, this acts like a social glue bonding people whether in one-onone relationships or bigger groups,” he explains. “The social side of it is really important – so when the lockdown periods happened, the isolation this caused was a massive problem.”

From Lovatt’s dance research, many respondents have told him how going clubbing allows them to forget everyday concerns – which for many people have only been multiplying in recent years. When clubs come under threat, Lovatt says, this denies people a “fundamental” outlet.

“I believe humans are born to dance,” he says. “If you ban it, either explicitly, or implicitly – for example, when a local authority chooses not to support an application for a nightclub – this leads to a situation where people are being prevented from doing something inherent.

“When you start preventing the expression of these natural urges, it creates frustration on an individual or societal level,” Lovatt adds.

Safe(r) Spaces

Through this lens, nightclubs are vital community assets for connecting and wellbeing. But some believe more energy could be invested in making them safer spaces for all.

Bristol-based electronic artist Yewande Adeniran records as Ifeoluwa and is an activist and music journalist. They also founded the Intervention initiative, offering music workshops for marginalised people. Adeniran argues that the idea of nightclubs as havens for marginalised groups is not a universal truth, and has written about why “decolonising the dancefloor” is important, otherwise clubs can offer a hostile environment to some groups, rather than a utopian safe space.

“This negatively impacts the mental health of those targeted and affected by the same societal and cultural behaviours that they’re seeking to escape,” Adeniran explains. “Without going too much into the historical and contemporary reasons, clubs aren’t the haven they portray themselves to be.”

Adeniran, who identifies as a Black, non-binary, queer, neurodivergent person, believes that as important as clubs are for cutting loose, more could be done to enhance their safety for minority groups.

“Clubbing has become much more hostile despite the widespread ‘safer spaces’ policies,” Adeniran says. “There’s been a co-option and commodification of the language usually used by the marginalised to articulate their experience.”

Night-time futures

While Adeniran believes the commercialisation of nightlife means a focus on interpersonal connections is missing, elsewhere the Bristol Nights campaign is aiming to educate and champion participants in the city’s nightlife.

Carly Heath says her team at the council are working hard to demonstrate and protect the benefits of the dancefloor. The campaign, which featured prominent anti-sexual harassment posters, highlighted ‘how we do a great night out’, aiming to inject entertainment with education.

“We tried to develop audiences with the Bristol Nights campaign focusing on conversations around night safety,” says Heath. “We recognised [postCovid] that we had 18 months-worth of 18-year-olds coming into venues who might have been unaware of how to behave. The messaging was ‘don’t be a creep’, ‘look out for your friends’… It’s all obvious but somehow felt like it needed reminding that we are a community and should interact with each other respectfully.”

Alongside the good times, great music and ongoing efforts to increase levels of respect, it’s the sense of community that seems invaluable for those for whom clubbing is a hobby. In a world weary with crises and tumult, it’s more important than ever to preserve and nurture this.

“It’s challenging to be a young person in today’s world,” says Heath. “Today’s 18-year-olds have grown up with the climate, Black Lives Matter, the pandemic, and have lived their lives on social media. There’s much more going on and we shouldn’t underestimate what these young minds have and are continuing to go through.” •

“We know that when people move together, this acts like a social glue bonding people”

Not just sordid dens of iniquity, nightclubs can have beneficial impacts on our mental health and wellbeing

Jim Ottewill

Sophie Filomena @anemo_lif

TARMACKED ISLAND: WAS THERE A BETTER ALTERNATIVE?

An outpouring of posts eulogising the wonders of Turbo Island emerged on social media after it was cleared, bemoaning the loss of a ‘cultural icon’. But what does it all mean for Stokes Croft?

Priyanka Raval

It’s a sunny Sunday morning in January and the smouldering remains of a Voi lie in the centre of Turbo Island – a valiant attempt at resurrecting the bonfire that once perennially blazed there. The centrepiece of Stokes Croft, Bristol’s “cultural quarter,”.

Of course, Turbo Island lies at the intersection between Jamaica Street and Stokes Croft – and in between two camps with opposing ideas about what it contributes to the culture of the area.

These clashes came to a head last year. The pyromania had become increasingly outlandish, and the local businesses more irate. Bristol City

Paved paradise: Turbo Island was tarmacked in 2022 after rising reports of anti-social behaviour

apparent. You’d have to really know it, and experience it, to get it.

I’ll admit: for me, Turbo Island occupies a cherished space in my heart. Perfectly positioned between Stokes Croft’s best clubs and en route to town, this island became an inevitable pitstop, and often the ultimate destination, of many a night out. A four pack of K Cider, the warmth of a burning mattress, a total stranger keen to tell you about their recent acid-induced epiphany – those were the days.

Its enigmatic charms lie in part due to its grey-area status. The privately owned Island existed outside of council jurisdiction and therefore the city’s street drinking ban. So long as the billboards were unobstructed, Wildstone seemed unbothered by the surrounding shenanigans.

And so Turbo Island – named after a cheap brand of cider from the 80s – became the unofficial locus of free parties, fires and impromptu raves. It felt anarchic, lawless, emblematic of the city’s counter cultural spirit.

Connection vs commerce

“It’s just a place where people can hang out and party together, have a fire, listen to music and bond! And it’s absolutely core to us as individuals and as a functioning society that we have a chance to do that,” says Lisa Furness from the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft (PRSC), the most vocal proponent of preserving Turbo Island.

For her, the cultural value was its social function: “I feel that one of the most urgent problems we face is the atomisation of our society, where we only mix with people from our own socio-economic background.

Council issued the landowner, London-based advertising firm Wildstone, with a community protection order. In November last year, Turbo Island was cleared and tarmacked over.

A torrent of posts eulogising the wonders of Turbo Island poured forth on social media, bemoaning the loss of a “cultural icon”. But in the rapidly gentrifying Stokes Croft, what “cultural value” it actually has is a much contested concept.

Wildstone said that once the works were complete, it wanted to discuss with the community how the site can be made more welcoming. But

three months on, no such efforts have materialised.

Was this the best solution? The Cable asked Stokes Croft businesses and organisations for their thoughts.

How a small triangle of land became an icon

I’m perched on a concrete ledge under the billboard – the only remaining place to sit now that the wall’s gone.

A chalked scribble on the floor reads, “Turbo Island 4ever.” My heart pangs with nostalgia.

Why this unremarkable triangle of land has become such an institution is not, at first glance, immediately

“Turbo, for all its flaws, was a place where a cross-section of the community could be together, and the fear and barriers and division could be reduced a little bit.”

Moreover, the Island was a safe haven for marginalised people excluded from other social spaces.

“The street is the only place that does not have entry requirements!”

But last summer, the owner of restaurant Jamaica Street Stores said the recent “deterioration” of Turbo Island had contributed to their decision to close. “Stokes Croft, albeit full of cultural charm, is a tricky spot,” said Charlie James in July 2022. These conflicting ideas of the culture of Stokes Croft exist on the same street.

The middle ground

“Yes, Turbo Island was great – and we have really good relationships with lots of the diehard Turbo locals,” says a nearby shopkeeper. “But in the last year, things just got way worse – something changed. It was a different crowd.”

The tarmac has helped reduce these problems he adds, relieved: “Is it nice not to see someone being savagely beaten outside my window?

Yes. Am I glad we can open a window without inhaling the fumes from burning plastic? Yes!” He says he’s nervous to speak openly out of fear of

being condemned as a gentrifier. “But that’s all well and good from people who don't actually have to live and work here day in, day out.”

The community buyout – a possible solution?

One solution that has been touted over the years was a community buyout. And the PRSC has made a number of unsuccessful bids in the past decade to buy Turbo Island. Adding insult to injury, Benoit Bennet, who works there, says the PRSC was often left out of stakeholder meetings: “We had

suggestions for how Turbo could have been used to work with the community,” he says.

“It's difficult to know what to do with Turbo Island,” adds Bennet. The whole part of why it's valuable is because no one is in charge of it.

If it was publicly owned, the council would be all over it.”

We can’t just keep hiding the problem

Wildstone has said social issues affecting Turbo Island are out of its control, but that it hopes to improve the appearance of the site. But

simply improving the appearance, Furness argues, doesn’t address the problem. “It's a surface level clearing out of people from the city centre so that we can carry on with our lives pretending that drugs, homelessness and poverty don't exist,” she says. She adds: “Invisiblising vulnerable people, and pushing them out of spaces where they feel safe just ends up isolating them, and making them way more vulnerable.”

Gentrification is not the sole contributor to the area’s problem. Stretched local services and a cost of living crisis all have a knock on effect – and local businesses cannot be expected to bear the brunt of that. And perhaps that’s a bitter pill to swallow for me and the other mistyeyed nostalgics clinging to a version of Turbo Island – and arguably Bristol as a whole – that no longer exists. Ultimately, the “cultural value” to triumph is the more lucrative one. Free parties and social connection just don’t generate the revenue that overpriced brunches do. Some hold their breaths for a Turbo Island ‘relaunch’, but for others, the now tarmacked triangle joins Tesco, Telepathic Heights and the Bearpit on the list of victims in Bristol’s fight against gentrification. •

Warmer times on the Island

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CartoonRalph Poetry corner

Two poems submitted to the PRSC in response to the changing face of Turbo island

Twist and turn like the flames of the fire, Underneath the night sky ravers wade the mire, Requests on the aux but it’s never awkward, Bev’s brought bevs, she’s here for the week, Others come and go, but a true islander takes a seat

- Joe Allison

We sat and vaped on Turbo Island

The metal bike rack cold beneath For no half charred sofa sat there

The lingering smell of lit cardboard Odorous lights rush past Tall festival metal restricted access Gazes turned of blue jeans and jumpers But glazed faces turned again

- Juliette PJ

Since trials began in 2020, there have been more than six million journeys taken using Voi scooters in Bristol and the South West.

While many people view e-scooters as a sustainable and convenient transport solution, others point out dangerous riding and safety risks, especially for pedestrians. A pre-trial government report titled ‘E-scooters: pavement nuisance or transport innovation?’ reflects this debate.

With trials now extended to May 2024, continued indecision on e-scooter regulations has created an effective monopoly in favour of the companies running the trial schemes, restricting market competition in a rapidly growing sector.

Currently effective in 31 regions in the UK, e-scooter schemes are operated by 12 companies, which had to bid for the contracts. Of these, Voi leads the UK market and, by December 2021, had claimed a 70% share.

This market share is bolstered by a real lack of alternative options. While it is legal to purchase an e-scooter, they can only be legally used on private land with the landowner's permission. Riding a privately owned scooter in public can result in six penalty points and a £300 fine, even if it is operationally identical to the scooters allowed in trial schemes.

In practice, there have been issues with the enforcement of these rules. In 2022, the government refused a request from Metro Mayor Dan Norris to provide additional police funding to effectively enforce e-scooter regulations. “We have got a real challenge,” Norris said at the time. “We already know there are many private e-scooters as well, out and about. They are completely illegal.”

With a bid process ongoing in Bristol for a long-term ‘micromobility’ provider, the city could see the familiar Voi scooters replaced in the city later in 2023. In November 2022,

Do e-scooter regulations need a new approach?

Extended e-scooter trials hand operators such as Voi an effective monopoly on local use. More thoughtful regulation would be fairer, and could help drive the innovation the technology needs to prove its green credentials

Nick Scott

Norris highlighted the scheme's scope and said over a quarter of a million local people are using the scooters, which is record-breaking nationwide.

Two-tier system risk

There are concerns though that a new sole provider will result in many of the same issues seen with Voi. Geofencing, a use of GPS technology to limit the areas dockless scooters can be ridden in, meant that many parts of Bristol were left for many months without scooter access – and without the option for private ownership this raises questions about equitable legal access to the technology.

As serious reliability issues with Bristol’s public transport continue, discussions about alternatives are increasingly pressing. With e-scooters now a staple in major UK cities, regulatory questions cannot wait until trials end in 2024.

Policymakers’ indecision has meant the UK’s regulatory landscape on e-scooters is far more disjointed than in many European countries. The majority of major European economies have allowed the use of private vehicles alongside trial schemes. In Germany, for example, privately owned e-scooters must be insured and meet the same regulatory standards as scooters offered by ride-sharing companies, but they can be used on public roads and bike paths. The contrasting approach taken in the UK invites uncomfortable questions about what is effectively government-enabled monopolisation within a rapidly growing sector. Reducing competition within a market in this way restricts consumer options, leaving people reliant on sole local providers in order to use a technology that has become ubiquitous in many cities.

This is problematic

in a global micro-mobility market that has attracted more than £4 billion in investments since 2018. Locally there has also been significant investment, with Bristol-based e-scooter startup Pure Electric recently securing £2.4 million through crowdfunding.

Questions over eco-credentials

Reducing emissions in urban areas is a key government goal, and electric micro-mobility vehicles have been heralded as a potential solution.

In 2019 though, the MIT Technology Review highlighted some of the shortcomings of e-scooters, with one of the key issues being the short lifespan of the vehicles. Viewing emissions on a per-mile basis – given that many e-scooters may only have a few years’ lifespan – the emissions in manufacturing outweigh any environmental benefit.

Reliability improvements are required before the environmental benefits of this technology are fully realised. A more competitive market is much more likely to facilitate this much-needed sustainability innovation. Following the blueprint of countries such as France and Germany, the UK can create a similarly clear regulatory framework for this technology. Consistent enforcement of clear legislation would provide a strong benchmark of expectations for the use and design of these technologies. With e-bikes legalised in the UK without a trial period, similar options for e-scooters would offer consumers a significantly more affordable private transport option.

The Clean Air Zone recently introduced in Bristol has brought the need for affordable, reliable transport alternatives into sharp focus. From a sustainability standpoint, regulations opening up the market can also help to drive innovation. Introducing the needed legislation on this will help to ensure fair and consistent access to technology within this rapidly growing sector. •

The

After years of being misdiagnosed and incorrectly medicated, I have finally got an ADHD diagnosis. But how different could my childhood have been if I’d been diagnosed sooner, like boys often are?

Words and illustration: Dolores McGurran

Iwas 25 when I finally got diagnosed with ADHD, after spending years researching neurodiversity and fighting for a correct assessment. I was known as a hyper and imaginative child, which made thriving at school harder and often left me feeling different and disconnected. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms mainly fall into two categories: inattentiveness (difficulty focusing) and hyperactivity (including impulsiveness). It is treated with medication and talking therapies. The cause is unknown, but it tends to run in families. Untreated ADHD can reduce life expectancy by as much as 13 years. In the UK it’s believed 2-5% of children and 3-4% of adults have the condition, mostly undiagnosed.

As a baby I avoided eye contact. I struggled to speak, and had speech therapy. I could never learn to ride a bike. I now wonder if I have dyspraxia – a developmental coordination disorder – which has links with ADHD.

At school, I fell behind and had to be tutored in reading and writing. My inattentiveness was dismissed as ‘daydreaming’. I loved art and was just deemed ‘creative’. It wasn’t disruptive, so not a red flag. Being creative seemed to explain my struggle with logical subjects, but I wonder if I could have thrived in an educational environment that understood my condition. I struggled with intense ‘daydreaming’, battling to focus on class. I found being different hard, and confusing. Neurodiversity presents differently in boys and girls. Girls are more capable of masking symptoms early, while hyperactivity in boys leads to them being diagnosed younger due to them disrupting class. An earlier diagnosis can help someone with ADHD understand and treat impulsivity in

their teen years and adult life, avoiding risky, unhealthy behaviours developing. They better understand their condition, emotions and world perception. Boys are more likely to be given the opportunity to develop healthy coping mechanisms – an opportunity we are robbing girls of. Having ADHD and mental health issues while feeling misunderstood led to my hyperactivity being less controllable, often acting without thinking. This impulsivity is why people with ADHD can engage in behaviours that place them at risk, including substance abuse,

dangerous driving and gambling. Many of these behaviours, which can feel highly addictive, begin in undiagnosed teenagers who don't understand their disorder and lack coping mechanisms. ADHD is believed to be linked to the brain struggling to produce dopamine, which may explain why we crave impulsive behaviour, but this negative behaviour often continues.

My mental health misdiagnosis meant that I was on and off antidepressants until 25. I was often offered short-term therapy but couldn’t change my behaviour without better understanding my

condition. I started to question if I had a dissociative disorder due to my inattentiveness, which worsened as I was bounced around services, therapists and GPs.

I finally got a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder (ADD) privately in 2020 and started stimulants, but they affected my sleep and appetite too much to continue. I was then prescribed atomoxetine, but I was still on antidepressants and had a serotonin overload, which can be fatal. No longer able to afford private help, I was put on the NHS waiting list, taking two and half years. My treatment is private but funded by the NHS. I was diagnosed with ADHD last summer, receiving my medication late December – a low dose of atomoxetine again, but without antidepressants this time. No therapy or other support is currently offered. Though more support would be welcome, at this point I’ll take what I can get.

I sometimes feel frustrated my symptoms weren’t picked up on sooner. How different could my education, childhood, teenage years and early adult life have been? Would my mental health and relationships be better? Could I now improve more with better support?

But I have some support. Many don’t. One in four prisoners in the UK are believed to have ADHD –that’s five to 10 times higher than its prevalence in the general population. How many people’s lives could be different if we focused on early diagnosis and prevention of serious symptoms? Could prevention ease pressure on the NHS and prisons? Despite the issues surrounding ADHD, there are positives. Research is advancing, as is public understanding. If we support health services and research into neurodiversity, the future for the next generation will improve. And that’s something worth fighting for. •

Belovitch

sugscott

ADHD crisis: waiting lists, lack of support and the gender bias in young diagnosis