‘St Jude’s needs systemic change to improve, not colourful architectural illustrations’

In the five years that I’ve lived in St Jude’s, I’ve never received notifications about local planning applications affecting where we live.

I’ve had no invitations to community engagement events. Apart from a noticeboard peppered with sun-bleached posters standing guard to a small arson-proof park, St Jude’s has remained forgotten and ignored.

That is until now, with the gleaming prospect of a large flagship development planned for an area of land currently home to an industrial part of the city.

But this is less of an opportunity to make positive change for the current area and more of an opportunity to bring residents to a shining new development, creating yet another Two-Cities space in an already fragmented Bristol.

People locally want change. They want a better social and community infrastructure. Better support needs and properly funded services for those who are struggling with their lives.

They want functional engaging spaces to take a break from towering high-rises and dusty roads. Nice play equipment for their children. We see that happening in parks in other areas of Bristol.

Instead, we have the unforgiving metal monsters emerging from the ground like an HG Wells tripod.

A small playground off Great Ann Street in St Jude’s – photo: Martin Booth

In the warm summer months, the Wade Street park bursts at the seams well into the long evenings. It’s a heavily used resource, packed with families taking up every inch of the enclosed pen.

There are other small areas of green space slotted between blocks. But these spaces are not designed particularly imaginatively. Some are a bit murky and they are often littered with drug paraphernalia from the night before.

I see visions of the new Frome Gateway development and the future St Jude’s pop up in my social media timelines.

Lovely idealistic visions of the future – that is if you take away the flood defences of the Danny and pedestrianise the exiting traffic into East Bristol.

But the images – in which cheery children sack race each other across George Jones Park, the street cafe with outdoor seating, widened pavements and narrowed main road – are a stark contrast to the realities of the area and its community.

Lawfords Gate on the corner of Pennywell Road – photo: Martin Booth

An artist’s impression of the future of the same area – image: HTA Design

Surely visions of future community space should encompass all the residents who live there, even the transient ones; the small groups who congregate with strong cider on a sunny day.

It’s their local area too, yet they are missing from the St Jude’s of the future, which makes the project feel like an oncoming monster of gentrification.

Whilst there’s nothing wrong with having a strong vision for improvement, better housing, less pollution, there’s a line between this and a Wapping Wharf-style development – a vision from which residents may feel pushed or can no longer afford to live in.

We don’t want any more bad housing. We don’t want developments with tiny bedrooms. We don’t want flats where rodents run from home to home along plumbing.

We don’t want flats with walls which collapse when you put a shelf up because they are paper thin or gas pipes that are not correctly fitted because it’s social housing and shared ownership.

Coronavirus has continued to highlight the vast disparities in Two-Cities Bristol more than ever. Shoeboxes of people piled on top of each other like flat-packed furniture. No proper outdoor space. No private space. A real lack of proper family housing.

In the middle of this melee, which often includes police incidents and highly visual skirmishes, children are expected to remain children. To develop in the same way as their Westbury-on-Trym counterparts. To not be affected by overcrowding, stifling rooms, crime and a lack of safe outdoor space.

St Matthias Park is one of the areas of green space in St Jude’s – photo: Martin Booth

The Lawrence Hill ward in which St Jude’s is based lies in a part of the city where the number of socially rented properties is ‘significantly high’ compared to the Bristol average.

It’s also the ward with the most overcrowded homes. A staggering 16.5 per cent of the ward population lives in over crowded households compared to the Bristol average of just 5.2 per cent. And, a ‘significantly high’ 65.9 per cent of the ward lives in flats.

What we will be getting with this development is more flats.

Bristol mayor Marvin Rees often talks of the need to build centrally, more densely and higher. But living in this kind of environment during periods of lockdown can become intolerable.

The answer is not to plonk more flats down in what will be a self-contained project, without taking into consideration the needs of the wider community.

This includes the hostels, the homeless services, the families who already live in St Jude’s who want properly funded services, fully accessible community spaces but without being shaped into Bristol’s version of Paddington Basin.

Project developer Gavin Bridge has tweeted about the Frome Gateway development for many months.

It’s true that he has strong visions of using the space in a meaningful and creative way – though the reality of the eventually finished project remains to be seen.

But the pocket parks won’t be around the council blocks. Miniature allotments won’t line Little Ann Street and children won’t be sack racing each other along Eugene Street, home of the discarded needles and wigs.

Gavin Bridge says of the project: “I want to be challenging the status quo, raising the bar and instigating real change, transforming places, communities and lives by creating sustainable, inclusive neighbourhoods, future-fit, healthy workspaces and low and zero carbon homes that connect people.”

Arguably, instigating real change, transforming places and connecting people falls under the remit of Bristol City Council, under the watchful eye of local councillors, the ones who should be pushing for change and yet have left Lawrence Hill ward floundering alone.

An idea for a new bridge across the Frome and a suggestion of how new routes could be created along its course, with steps for outside theatre or music events – image: HTA Design

Yes, St Jude’s residents want improvement, families want better for their children and the children want an opportunity for a better future for themselves.

But the city should not be relying on developers for this level of improvement, especially when caps can be put on social housing numbers.

We need systemic change to improve St Jude’s, not the pipedreams laid out in architects’ wishy washy illustrations.

Jen Smith is a parent-carer living in St Jude’s with her two disabled children. She is an advocate of equity and inclusion in Bristol, and is standing to be a Lib Dem councillor for Central ward in the 2021 local elections.

Main photo: Martin Booth

Read more: ‘I love St Jude’s but it’s as if the area doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter’