Hartcliffe 'Let the community decide how £20m funding is spent'

Last week Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised 'Trailblazer Neighbourhood' Hartcliffe 'up to £20million' of investment - but how it will be spent remains unclear. Tristan Cork asked local people what they thought...

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THE community in Hartcliffe should be at the heart of deciding how £20 million of special government money is spent there - and it should have a lasting legacy to improve the area for years and years to come.

And one radical idea being put forward could be to simply give every man, woman and child in the South Bristol estate a lump sum of hundreds of pounds each - and leave it up to the people themselves to decide what should happen to the money.

That was an idea floated by a former councillor for Hartcliffe, Paul Smith, who last year published a book about how the community had been 'betrayed' in the 1950s and 60s when residents moved to the edge of the city with the promise of a 'Garden City' full of venues and facilities, which were never built.

Mr Smith was in charge of the city's housing for four years from 2016 as a council cabinet member, and is now the chief executive of Elim Housing Association in Bristol. He said he feared the £20 million 'won't touch the sides' in Hartcliffe, and there was a danger much of it is spent on consultants and contractors.

Last week in her Spending Review, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a new scheme called 'Trailblazer Neighbourhoods, which had been 'left behind' by successive Governments and would now each receive up to £20 million of funding.

Almost all of the 20 neighbourhoods to receive the funding are in the north or the Midlands, but Hartcliffe was named too, and local councillors welcomed the news.