Bristol City Leap Residents start to feel impact of billion pound plan

Most city folk won't have even heard of it - but the huge partnership between the council and a US firm is starting to have an impact, as Tristan Cork reports...

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T is touted as the biggest deal of its kind in British history, with a headline figure for the partnership between Bristol City Council and US giants Ameresco put at £1billion.

Until now the Bristol City Leap project - for the vast majority of people in Bristol - has had little impact. The scale of the deal has created headlines and troubled the city’s political twitterers, but in terms of visible change for the city, few would be able to describe who or what it is. So far the most high-profile project has been the gradual creation of what could end up being a huge district heat network, piping hot water to all the new developments around the city centre, St Phillips, Redcliffe and Bedminster.

But last month, City Leap reached the outer parts of the city, with the news that a solar farm was to be created in a field on the edge of Withywood. For perhaps the first time, many people in the city sat up and took notice of the Bristol City Leap project. City Leap said they have had good feedback so far from people around Withywood, but hundreds of people who may or may not live nearby - signed a petition against the idea of a solar farm in the horses’ paddock at the bottom of the Dundry Slopes.

James Sterling, the City Leap’s communications manager, explained that the project is actually many much smaller projects, tied together by a “strategic partnership”.

Those projects can be divided very roughly into two categories.