Bridge Farm Submit Planning Application

The historic site at Bridge Farm, Bristol is set to be lovingly restored as part of ambitious ecologically friendly plans.

Bridge Farm, once a landmark building in Stapleton village but now in a rather sorry state, is to be restored by a local community group. And what’s more, a community of self-built affordable eco homes is planned to spring up alongside it.

The driving force behind the ambitious project is Ashley Vale Action Group, or AVAG, the team of self-builders and eco pioneers who built the Yard in St Werburgh’s. When the opportunity came along to buy Bridge Farm and 4 acres of land in 2018, the group jumped at the chance.

Ruth Larbey, one of the volunteer directors of AVAG, commented “We’re tremendously proud to have got to this stage. It's the culmination of 3 years’ hard work. AVAG bought Bridge Farm in January 2018 and huge efforts have been put into community building, fundraising, outreach, restoring the old buildings and the land, and working through our dreams and ideas together. In late 2019 we secured grant funding to take us into planning so thank you to Power to Change and to Homes England for their support.”

The group behind the plans have worked hard to listen and take on board everyone’s hopes and wishes for the site.

“Inevitably it’s impossible to give everybody everything they want. We believe the plans as proposed are absolutely true to our principles: sustainable, light touch development, which is affordable, beautifully designed and sensitive to the heritage of the farm. We think the plans strike a really good balance between growing space and space for development. We really hope people in the local area and across Bristol like the plans and feel they can support them. We’d be interested to hear everyone’s views, this is community-led housing in action.”

Some of the plans can be found at https://bridgefarmbristol.co.uk/the-site/our-plans/

The whole application is available to view on the Bristol City Council planning site under reference 20/05972/P.