Police Station Redevelopment

Teachings in Dub regular sound system night @Trinity, ©Khali Ackford

Trinity Community Arts Statement re Trinity Road Police Station Redevelopment, Sept 2021

Trinity welcomes the prospect of increased affordable homes in the locality offered through the proposed scheme, but it’s important for everyone to understand what that will actually mean in practice.

People need housing and existing residents also want to see improvements to their area. However, as one local resident has fed back to us regarding the proposed development; “When they say affordable housing there is no mention of social housing - that simply means people on benefits will have no chance to get a house, which is the issue we have in Bristol - there's not enough social housing. Not affordable housing. Social housing.”

As with other developments in the city and country, we have to be mindful about the 1st of 10 principles from the Govt’s National Design Guide, which is ‘context’ and this rapid re-imagining of our city has to include everyone.

Unfortunately, in spite of Agent of Change, the responsibility to protect what exists already falls to individual businesses and citizens like us.

As with recent developments near venues such as Motion, we are keen to see as part of this development that a Deed of Easement is placed onto the application as a condition at planning stage, to protect Trinity as an existing venue with a rich music and cultural heritage and a lively and diverse present-day offering.

We have discussed with developer acoustic considerations and are keen to understand more about how they've been incorporated into the design. So far, there has been a lot of good will expressed.

Now we just need to ensure this translates into conditions and mitigation measures as part of the development to legally safeguard Trinity’s future as a cultural institution for East Bristol.

We recommend anyone with concerns to direct these through the Bristol City Council planning portal (application ref no. 21/04338/F).