Bristol: Local News

I can remember there being 5 pubs in Lawrence Weston,all gone now, is that down to the expense of alcohol  ?
One thing about this story that is wrong is that if it takes 31 minutes to walk to the Lamplighters  how does it take longer to walk to the Hope and Anchor ?must have taken a very odd route its a 10 minute walk at most.

Last remaining pub in Bristol neighbourhood saved from demolition and housing plan..By Alex Seabrook, Local democracy reporter

A community group is trying to buy the dilapidated building from a developer who wants to knock it down

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The last remaining pub in a Bristol neighbourhood has been saved from a plan to demolish it and build houses. Lawrence Weston used to have five community pubs, but now only one is left which shut five years ago and the building has since been left to deteriorate.

The Giant Goram pub, on Barrowmead Drive, was the first one to open in the estate over half a century ago. The pub was bought by property developers Hawkfield Homes in 2019, who now want to knock down the building and eight build houses, as well as a tiny “micropub”.

Councillors at Bristol City Council have deferred a decision on granting planning permission, and it looks likely a refusal will follow. The development control A committee heard from locals and the Campaign for Real Ale about why the pub should be saved.

Christopher Faulkner Gibson said: “The community group capable of funding and building one of the tallest wind turbines in the country is more than capable of restoring and reopening a local pub, and has developed a viable business plan to do so. CAMRA stands ready to join the local community in successfully defending any appeal, again.”

A local community group offered to buy the pub from the developer, but their bid was rejected. The Save Our Giant Goram campaign was set up by the Ambition Lawrence Weston group, which last year built a giant wind turbine in Avonmouth. The income raised from the turbine is being ploughed back into Lawrence Weston, to pay for things like emergency funds for locals.

Norman Spalding added: “Full-sized pubs can be used for communal events such as weddings and funerals. Clubs and societies can meet there. They can be a focus for casual socialising and public events.

“Micropubs typically offer restricted hours because of their close proximity to residents, have little or no outside space, and a limited or no food offering. Community ownership has been used to revive over 100 full-sized pubs around the UK, and to date, none has failed.”

The building is now in a poor state and has been frequently targeted by vandals. Councillors said that this week they saw fences around the pub were easy to squeeze through and climb over, with broken windows and little apparent effort by the developer to keep the building safe. The developer denied claims they paid contractors to remove part of the roof.

Paul Jobson, representing the developer, said: “The site remains vacant and continues to be subject to vandalism and anti-social behaviour. The applicant would like to address misleading statements from objectors which suggest they deliberately damaged and vandalised the property, including suggestions that contractors had been appointed.

“This is categorically not true. My client would like councillors to disregard such comments.”

A key question was whether a full-sized pub would be economically viable. The developer paid for consultants to write a report saying that the pub would not be able to make enough money to stay open, although serious doubt was thrown on how valid these claims were.

Labour Councillor Zoë Peat said: “I’m extremely torn because on the one hand I love having new houses, I want people to have new homes and the housing backlog to be gone. A micropub is better than no pub. The big worry is that we’ll get this great pub, it’ll be the Giant Goram, and then it won’t be profitable and it’ll have to close, and we’ll be back here in a couple of years.”

Another issue is the lack of alternative pubs nearby. Lawrence Weston has few community spaces left, and planning rules aim to protect pubs in local neighbourhoods, due to their role in bringing people together and fostering friendships. Councillors doubted that a “micropub”, with potentially only space for 16 people at a time, would be able to fulfil those functions.

The micropub would be built next to one of the new houses, and would not be protected from noise complaints made by neighbours. Usually, pubs and clubs are protected from licensing reviews, under the “agent of change” rule. But this wouldn’t apply for the micropub, as it would open around a year after the eight houses were constructed, threatening its long-term future.

Cllr Peat added: “The other side is that this pub has been around since 1958, it’s 66 years old and it’s the heart of the community. In Lawrence Weston we don’t have any restaurants, other than a couple of Chineses. We don’t have any pubs. We have a youth centre that opens maybe two or three times a week in the evenings.

“We don’t have a lot here. The question is whether or not I want to take a chance on us actually getting a pub that the community deserves, or whether I should go for the safe option of a micropub and some more houses.”

The committee voted to defer a decision on granting permission, to give planning officers time to draft reasons to refuse the plans. This means they will likely be refused on October 23, the next time the committee meets.

Voting in favour of deferral were Green Cllrs Ellie Greeman, George Calascione and Serena Ralston; Labour Cllrs Katja Hornchen and Al Al-Maghrabi; and Liberal Democrat Cllr Sarah Classick. Voting against was Conservative Cllr Richard Eddy. Labour Cllr Zoë Peat abstained. The chair of the committee, Green Cllr Rob Bryher, appeared to forget to cast a vote himself, although he did propose the motion to defer and made a case for refusal within the debate.

In the name of God, how intelligent must this guy be?   He wanders into a city centre branch of McDonalds, an establishment with more cameras than the British Press Photographers' Association, and starts laying about him with a machete.
I`d give him 15 years for being a violent criminal, and 15 years for being too stupid to be allowed to walk the streets.

He would have known about the cameras but he just didnt give a flying one,he will do his time and could do a similar attack a week after his release.

Why not ask people in Lawrence Weston what they would like there ? pub,play area,houses.

I think where people have disagreed with you Trymer is on capital punishment.
I think we all agree that sentences should reflect the very serious nature of the crime.

This post shows you to be an anti democratic leftist fascist (something that I realised long ago) who would like to see anyone that he disagrees with 'eradicated'  you dont even have the excuse that this is one of your nocturnal hours posts,perhaps you got on the sauce early ?

The problem these days is that we are in the post truth era where unfounded non factual opinion is used to counter fact based expert thought on an equal basis.
People have short concentration spans hence Channel 5 bringing in the 5 minute news break. As much of the media have learnt over time, especially in the last 10 years, people look at headlines. Even where the text of an article contradicts the soundbite headline, few read further than the first paragraph.
Hence 'Germany to use Britain's Rwanda facilities' intimating that Germany will do the same as the UK intended.
Actually the article then states later that a minor member of a coalition party in Germany has suggested processing asylum applications in Rwanda, but with successful applicants being returned to Germany unlike the UK which wanted to leave them languishing in Rwanda.

Similarly pupils are taught at school to pass exams without necessarily absorbing the facts of what they are taught.
This then translates into their working life where, for example, in a UK Bank I had to take credit examinations after 30 years of doing the job and failed one of the modules that I should be considered proficient in. When I spoke to the team leader, she apologisingly said that my problem was that I was old and thought too much about the questions. The young people were taught to read the work, look at previous papers to see what was looked for as an answer, pass and then move on. She admitted that most of those who took the exams forgot most of what they were supposed to have learnt. I subsequently passed it without issue.
After I left that bank I took the Prince II project management exams. In a refresher course before the exams the examiner admitted that they were not there to hone our skills as a project manager, simply to get us through the exams. There is no way more than half of the people who passed could manage a project, yet they were off to apply for jobs in that area of expertise immediately after.

Training is a joke at a lot of workplaces,its just a box ticking exercise a lot of the time.

Another thing that I noticed (and not just in the workplace) is that people quickly Google subjects so that they can join in a conversation and look knowledgeable, the problem is that some of them just quote from wikipedia which isnt always 100% correct and they can make berks of themselves which is quite amusing when you realise what they have done.