Housing Village will become town, community fears

THERE weren’t many spare seats in the Legion in Whitchurch Village on Tuesday night, but it wasn’t the football or a birthday party that had brought people from across the community together.

- Tristan CORK [e-mail]

Sitting in worried groups, more than 100 people studied maps and charts, and listened to their local councillor explain what the future of their village could look like.

Cllr Paul May sits on the council’s cabinet over in Bath and is responsible for children’s services, but it is what the planning department is doing that is vexing him, and brought all the villagers out on a dark and blustery evening.

B&NES planners are taking the new Labour Government's message to look to the green belt as a place to “build baby build’ as the slogan from the party conference earlier this month said. And Whitchurch Village is a community literally defined by its green belt.

The village was here long before Bristol grew towards it in the past 80 years. First Brislington, then Stockwood, then an area of urban Bristol itself was called Whitchurch, prompting the addition of the word “village” to distinguish the North East Somerset village from the housing estates across the border.