by sarah — last modified 22/02/2025 11:44 AM

Roots of Resilience

by sarah — last modified 22/02/2025 11:44 AM

Igloo

Trinity Garden Party

Trinity's Garden Party. Credit: Alistair Brookes

Trinity join Eastside Community Trust, Windmill Hill City Farm and 13 other organisations to call for urgent action to protect and enhance Bristol’s shared spaces.

The initiative - Roots of Resilience - calls for urgent measures to safeguard and improve Bristol’s shared spaces, which are currently under threat due to various challenges, including legislation facilitating council property sales to address budget shortfalls.

“Unfortunately, without changes to how decisions are made about community infrastructure, the future of those spaces will always be at risk. The suggestions we are putting forward will enable us to secure a brighter future for our much-loved community spaces" Steve Sayers, CEO of Windmill Hill City Farm

In a published manifesto we join others in calling for several changes to ensure community buildings are appropriately valued. This includes:

Review the Community Asset Transfer (CAT) process, to enable more community organisations to consider this route.
Adopt a target and strategy for increasing the number of community owned assets, in line with the One City Plan.
Delegate leadership for community assets to a member of cabinet or committee, recognizing the sector’s role across council departments.
Delegate authority to officer level to award CAT leases, for 95 years, when these are up for renewal.
Include representation from Neighbourhoods and Committees in the CAT decision-making committees.
Create a framework for protection and disposal of council owned assets, including creating a new ‘community’ asset class which prioritises preservation of community spaces.
Implement a fair rent structure which recognises the social and investment benefits of community-owned assets.
Develop a capital investment strategy for organisations with CAT leases

Read the full manifesto here

How you can help

Decisions makers, city and business leaders are invited to talk to us directly, understand more about the work we do and see how these changes could enable us to make a much greater impact across the whole city.
People of Bristol are invited to share their thoughts and feelings on what their local community space means to them, by writing on a ribbon or sharing a word, sentence or memory on social media using the hashtag #CommunityRoots.

The Community Anchor Organisations (CAOs) who created the campaign and manifesto are: