Bristol Tree Felling Protest

July 8th 2008
A protest organ­ised by the Snuff Mills Action Group attract­ed a very healthy turnout last night despite adverse weath­er con­di­tions. Around 250 peo­ple turned out to express their dis­gust at Bris­tol City Coun­cils approval of a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to fell 27 trees in a con­ser­va­tion area.

Snuff Mills protestJuly 8th 2008
A protest organ­ised by the Snuff Mills Action Group attract­ed a very healthy turnout last night despite adverse weath­er con­di­tions. Around 250 peo­ple turned out to express their dis­gust at Bris­tol City Coun­cils approval of a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to fell 27 trees in a con­ser­va­tion area.

Grove Wood on Black­ber­ry Hill in Sta­ple­ton has been part of the hos­pi­tal site since it was orig­i­nal­ly built to house French pris­on­ers of war dur­ing the Napoleon­ic Wars but was sold off at auc­tion last year to Mr Hus­sain Jafari Najafaba­di of Clifton for £39,000 as part of the Gov­ern­ments dri­ve to sell off sur­plus state owned assets. The land forms part of the con­ser­va­tion area that runs from East­ville right through to Dow­nend.

Mr Jafari has a record of plan­ning vio­la­tions (most of which have been grant­ed ret­ro­spec­tive­ly) and, it is alleged, has been heard to be brag­ging of his long term plan to turn the site into a hotel and con­fer­ence cen­tre. His busi­ness deal­ings are car­ried out under a num­ber of alias­es.

Short­ly after pur­chas­ing the wood, the new landown­er set about cut­ting down trees with impuni­ty and sit­ed a por­tak­abin with­in sight of the main road, near the entrance to the Wood.

Bris­tol City coun­cil took no action and when he sub­mit­ted a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to fell the trees lin­ing the road, locals thought that con­ser­va­tion area sta­tus would prob­a­bly lim­it health and safe­ty work to prun­ing alone, giv­en the mas­sive impact on visu­al ameni­ty that felling would have.

Bris­tol City Coun­cil grant­ed the per­mis­sion cit­ing that the list­ed wall was being under­mined, a sew­er was affect­ed and high­way obstruc­tion.

The protest last night was the first of its kind in the cam­paign to save Grove Woods and Snuff Mills Action Group Spokesman Steve Mick­lewright said:
“We want to know the real ratio­nale behind this deci­sion, we are very sus­pi­cious about what’s hap­pened here and we want prop­er answers imme­di­ate­ly”.

He went on to say
“Come on Bris­tol City Coun­cil, do your job and stop pan­der­ing to rogue devel­op­ers.”

This full details of this cam­paign can be obtained from the link below, and the online peti­tion can be accessed also.
http://snuffmills.blogspot.com/