Your say / Yew Tree Farm
‘All I want is proper and best practice for this precious and rare habitat’
Yew Tree Farm is Bristol’s jewel: a sparking emerald of green.
I love the farm but I don’t have PR people or a university education, so apologies in advance if my writing isn’t the best.
I was aghast to read Marvin Rees’ latest mayoral blog and hope I can cut through some of the misinformation.
is needed now More than ever
Yew Tree Farm escarpment is a protected view from both Clifton Suspension Bridge and Ashton Court Estate, a prominent hillside, and a site of nature conservation interest (SNCI) which should be protected from any harm.
In 2019, I met with a senior planner from Bristol City Council who first explained to me that this is why Yew Tree farmland could never be developed.
Yew Tree Farm in Bedminster Down is Bristol’s last working farm – photo: Mark Ashdown
Nobody who supports the farm is against the rights of those who wish to be buried.
My understanding is that the expansion of South Bristol Cemetery & Crematorium is not exclusively for Muslim families, but for those of other religions too.
It was surprising that before I was excluded from email communications with the project manager (the applicant) that I was asked to copy in Kevin Slocombe (the mayor’s chief of staff) and Rees, despite being told the mayor does not interfere with planning applications.
The planning system is an independent and quasi-judicial process. Personal beliefs should play no part.
The planning committee meeting on Yew Tree Farm in November 2023 – photo: Rob Browne
Referencing historical permitted development from the 1960s – as Rees’ blog did – is disingenuous.
Times have changed. Hanging was still legal in the 1960s. There was no talk of climate change or indeed an ecological emergency. The land was not designated an SNCI.
The mayor’s blog failed to recognise that it will take 30 years for the site to recover to today’s baseline of ecological value. This is the equivalent to one and a half generations.
Dormice numbers have declined by 70 per cent in 24 years. On this basis, we have just nine years left before they are extinct. To have them on Yew Tree Farm should be treasured.
Bristol City Council’s development control B committee sent the applicant away from September’s meeting to form a burial strategy as the Yew Tree Farm site had not gone through scrutiny, meaning no other councillors had had any input and no other new burial sites across Bristol had been considered.
When this was forced back to the same committee under the threat from Rees on non-determination, elected councillors still had not been able to investigate the city council’s burial strategy. If indeed we have one?
South Bristol Cemetery & Crematorium has been granted permission to expand onto land used by neighbouring Yew Tree Farm – photo: Martin Booth
When considering Yew Tree Farm, all appropriate surveys should have been undertaken. They were not.
We are missing up to date and full bat surveys, otter surveys, invertebrate surveys, winter bird and breeding bird surveys, and reptile surveys.
This application to expand South Bristol Cemetery should have been refused on this alone.
More importantly, on February 4, after outline planning had been approved, we received a Freedom of Information report that confirmed that council officers knew of an active dormouse nest in the meadow at Yew Tree Farm in February 2023.
There is also another confirmed nest in a part of the proposed crematorium site proving that an active and rare colony of the endangered species exists here.
This information was not shared with planning committee members or the public in either the meetings in September or November.
Why was this information hidden?
The Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 protects dormice and yet we have read that Rees is encouraging officers not to adhere to this legislation.
It is crucial that full summer dormice surveys are carried out from April to September to properly determine dormice activity on the fields.
Avon Wildlife Trust – who rarely comment on private planning applications – have been regular visitors to Yew Tree Farm and know its biodiversity in detail.
For them to object but be dismissed and diminished by Bristol’s chief planner, Simone Wilding, in November’s meeting was heart breaking and appearing not to be impartial.
Another idea to quash is that the site will give 25 years of burials. Reading the supporting documents, it appears the council may have vastly inflated the burial figures. Ten years is much more likely.
It is terrifying that the mayor is offering the grazing to those responsible for the destruction of the ancient hedgerow and dormice habitat in the meadow at Yew Tree Farm.
It is hard to think of a less appropriate ‘custodian’ on an SNCI. The dormice population in the meadow is almost certainly dead from their actions.
Some of the most recent damage done to Yew Tree Farm – photo: Mia Vines Booth
I’m sure some senior officers have private concerns about this application, but I think the pressure from the mayor’s office has forced an incomplete and destructive application to be rushed through at the end of his administration under the guise of “getting stuff done”.
We still have capacity and time to bury Bristol’s dead and reconsider this flawed planning process. I urge officers to resist an easy life and to uphold your code of conduct.
I pray my grandchildren will be proud of their nanny trying desperately to look after Bristol’s dormice population on this wonderful nature rich farm.
I lament that in the last few hours before the pre-election period, Bristol’s outgoing mayor Rees chose his last political statement to be vilifying a grandmother who solely wants proper and best practice for a precious and rare habitat.
This is an opinion piece by Catherine Withers, the farmer at Yew Tree Farm
Main photo: Rob Browne
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