#Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood Businesses 'Insulted' by Council Grant Offer: When £10,000 for Street Art Won't Save Your Dying Business.

East Bristol businesses are dying. The council offers decorations for the funeral.

The Grant That Insults While Businesses Burn.

Bristol City Council has excelled in the art of bureaucratic absurdity. Having successfully strangled local businesses in Barton Hill with traffic restrictions that severed them from their customers, the Green-led administration has now magnanimously offered those same dying businesses “adaptation grants” of up to £10,000 – for everything except what they actually need to survive.

It’s the institutional equivalent of setting someone’s house on fire, then offering them a voucher for interior design consultations whilst explicitly refusing to pay for fire damage. The sheer brass neck of it is almost impressive.

Deniece Dixon, who runs Cafe Conscious on Avonvale Road, captured the sentiment perfectly: “Myself and all the other shops, Hamblins, Spar etc, we find it massively insulting. We are all on our last legs of staying open – every day that we are open, we are all losing money.”

The grant application deadline was yesterday (14 November 2025), giving businesses barely weeks to apply for financial assistance that explicitly cannot address their actual problem: catastrophic loss of revenue since the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood scheme began strangling their customer base.

What the Council Will Fund: A Masterclass in Missing the Point.

Let’s examine what Bristol City Council deems worthy of funding through these “adaptation grants,” because this list reads like satire but is, tragically, real policy:

• Maps and signage to help customers find your business (through the labyrinth of bus gates and traffic filters the council erected specifically to keep them away)

• New seating (for the customers who can’t bloody well reach you because you’ve installed gates across the only sensible route)

• Cycle storage (because obviously everyone cycles to the chippy for their family’s Friday night tea, and carrying groceries home from Spar on a bike in February rain is perfectly reasonable)

• “Street art, greenery or other improvements” (pretty murals to decorate the corpse of your business)

• Cargo bikes for deliveries (to deliver to customers who’ve already stopped coming because—and follow the logic here—you made it impossible for them to drive to you)

• “Cosmetic building improvements to make it more appealing to customers” (because the problem is clearly your tired paintwork, not the fact that getting to you now requires a 20-minute detour)

• An “improved online presence to boost orders” (your website was definitely the issue, not the bus gate directly outside your front door)

This is what happens when policy is designed by people who’ve completely severed the connection between their brains and reality. The council is essentially offering to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic whilst refusing to acknowledge that the ship is sinking.

What the Council Won’t Fund: Everything That Keeps a Business Alive.

Here’s what the grants explicitly exclude – which is to say, everything a business actually needs when the council has just slashed its revenue by making it inaccessible to customers:

• Staff wages

• Rent or deposits

• Utility bills

• Insurance

• Business rates

• Consumables (cleaning products, food, stock)

Notice the pattern? The council has surgically excised every single operating expense that businesses must cover when passing trade evaporates. This isn’t an oversight—this is deliberate institutional cowardice dressed up as support.

They’re acknowledging the suffering whilst point-blank refusing to admit causation. It’s like a surgeon cutting off your leg and then offering you a voucher for nicer shoes whilst insisting the amputation and your sudden inability to walk are completely unrelated issues.

The message is crystal clear: “Yes, we know you’re dying. Here’s money for decoration. No, we won’t help you with the actual dying part. That would be admitting we killed you.”

The Barton Hill Business Apocalypse: A Green Party Production.

The East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood scheme, which the Green Party administration chose to proceed with after winning control of Bristol City Council in May 2024, has created a perfect storm of business destruction in Barton Hill.

Bus gates installed on Avonvale Road and Marsh Lane – including one installed at 3 am with police and private security present – have effectively severed businesses from their customer base. Workers from St Philips who previously bought lunch from these establishments now avoid the area entirely due to massively increased journey times.

Bristol Labour’s statement on the scheme makes the impact crystal clear: “These businesses primarily attribute their drop in revenue to the two bus gates in Barton Hill on Avonvale Road and Marsh Lane, rather than other aspects of the EBLN. Workers in St Philips previously used to buy their lunch from these businesses but now avoid it due to the EBLN increasing the journey time so significantly.”

Labour is calling for “an assessment of the impact of the scheme on local businesses, with compensation provided” – which is precisely what the Green administration refuses to do.

Cafe Conscious: A Case Study in Council-Inflicted Damage.

Deniece Dixon’s Cafe Conscious story demonstrates the profound disconnect between the council’s abstract vision and the lived reality of business owners in Barton Hill.

This isn’t just any business. During the November 2023 Barton House evacuation, when hundreds of residents were suddenly displaced from their homes, Deniece threw open the cafe doors and worked around the clock providing hot meals, essential supplies, and a safe space for affected families. She stayed until 1 am the first night and was back at 8 am the next morning. The community rallied around her, raising funds to replace broken equipment. She won BBC Radio Bristol’s Great Neighbour Award for her humanitarian work.

During COVID-19, Cafe Conscious delivered hundreds of meals to vulnerable residents. The cafe has hosted coffee mornings for elderly residents, sessions for people with learning disabilities, and support groups for parents of children with autism. For over a decade, it’s been a genuine community institution serving one of Bristol’s most deprived areas.

And now? The council is destroying it.

In April 2025, Deniece wrote an open letter slamming the council’s “underhand tactics,” including closing Avonvale Road on Google Maps without informing local businesses. “Cafe Conscious has always been an independent. We relied on passing trade, which kept us going so we could support the community… With this East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood and the bus gate directly in front of us you have cut off our trade. How are we supposed to carry on?”

She continued: “You all should be doing everything to keep us open. Instead, you are trying to end Cafe Conscious. During COVID, we made and delivered hundreds and hundreds of meals. The evacuation of Barton House we supported because we care, and now you are destroying all of this.”

The council’s response? Ed Plowden (aka L Pondweed – yes, it’s an anagram), chair of Bristol City Council’s transport and connectivity committee (apparently “connectivity” means disconnecting businesses from their customers, workers from their lunch spots, and policy from reality), offered platitudes about encouraging “more people to walk, wheel and cycle” – completely ignoring that a business losing money daily cannot survive on aspirational modal shift rhetoric.

The Orwellian Language of “Adaptation.”

Calling this an “Adaptation Grant” rather than compensation is a masterclass in political doublespeak that would make Orwell himself slow-clap in horrified admiration.

“Adapt or die” sounds very Darwinian and market-driven. It conjures images of entrepreneurial flexibility, of businesses evolving to meet changing consumer needs. Except that the council created the hostile environment these businesses are supposed to “adapt” to. This wasn’t natural selection; this was deliberate intervention followed by victim-blaming when the intervention caused precisely the harm businesses predicted it would.

It’s like pushing someone off a cliff and then, as they plummet, shouting down “Have you considered adapting to gravity?”

The council’s own letter to businesses is a masterpiece of bureaucratic arse-covering: “The council is now offering grants to help businesses adapt to the changed road layouts affecting some businesses’ trading circumstances.”

Let’s parse that exquisite piece of institutional bullshit:

• “Changed road layouts” – Passive voice, as if the roads spontaneously rearranged themselves like sentient tarmac. Not “the road layouts we deliberately changed.” Just... changed. By magic, presumably.

• “Affecting some businesses’ trading circumstances” – A vague euphemism so anaemic it’s practically transparent. Not “destroying their revenue” or “making their businesses unviable.” Just... affecting. Like a light drizzle affects your picnic plans.

• “Some businesses” – As if this is affecting a random subset through sheer bad luck, rather than systematically hammering every business along the affected routes.

The language is designed to create distance between the council’s actions and the consequences of those actions. It’s the linguistic equivalent of “mistakes were made” – technically acknowledging a problem whilst ensuring no actual human being is responsible for it.

The £6 Million Question: Where’s the Business Impact Assessment?

The East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood scheme cost £6 million of public money. That’s a substantial investment in reshaping how people move through Barton Hill, Redfield, and St George.

Did that £6 million budget include any meaningful business impact assessment? Did it include compensation for businesses that would predictably suffer? Apparently not, because the “adaptation grant” scheme was only announced in September 2025 – after businesses had been haemorrhaging money for months.

Bristol Labour is demanding “an assessment of the impact of the scheme on local businesses, with compensation provided.” The fact that this is still being demanded in October 2025 tells you everything you need to know about whether the Green administration conducted proper due diligence before implementation.

The council had months of consultation, planning, and implementation. They knew businesses were concerned. They knew passing trade was essential to these enterprises. And they proceeded anyway, without adequate mitigation.

The Managed Decline Strategy: What They’re Not Saying Out Loud.

Here’s what’s really happening, stripped of the platitudes and sustainability-speak: The council has decided these areas will transition to different economic models. More foot traffic, more cycling, fewer cars. That’s a legitimate policy choice. Councils have the right to make such choices.

But here’s where it gets insidious: they’re pretending this transition is cost-free for existing businesses, or that those costs can be managed with some fresh paint and a fucking cargo bike.

That’s not just wrong—it’s a lie. And given the calibre of people involved, they know it’s a lie.

This is a managed decline with a progressive aesthetic. The vision is clear as day once you see it: fewer car-dependent businesses serving working-class customers, replaced eventually by establishments catering to the cycling middle classes who can afford to live in the “improved” neighbourhood.

When these businesses close – and several are “on their last legs” according to Deniece Dixon – the council will roll out the prepared statement. They offered support. Generous grants, even. The businesses just couldn’t adapt to “changing circumstances,” as if those circumstances emerged from the economic ether rather than from specific policy decisions made by specific people in specific council meetings.

It’s gentrification by traffic filter. Social cleansing by bus gate. And they’re doing it whilst flying the flag of environmental justice, which makes it all the more obscene.

The quiet part they won’t say out loud: these businesses aren’t wanted in the new vision. A chippy serving workers from St Philips? A Spar for local residents doing their shopping? A community cafe for elderly residents and families with disabled children?

Those don’t fit the aesthetic of the “liveable neighbourhood” they’re building. Better to have artisan bakeries and vegan cafes charging London prices. Better to have boutique shops serving the demographic who cycle everywhere because they work from home in creative industries.

The working-class businesses serving working-class customers are collateral damage in pursuit of a vision that, coincidentally, serves a whiter, wealthier, more middle-class demographic.

And when you point this out, they’ll act shocked. Offended, even. That’s not what this is about! It’s about sustainability! Clean air! Children’s safety!

Bollocks. If this were really about those things, there’d be adequate compensation for the businesses getting crushed in the transition. The money exists—they spent £6 million on the scheme. They could find money for compensation if they wanted to.

They don’t want to. Because compensation would mean admitting causation. And admitting causation would mean admitting this is a political choice with winners and losers, not some natural evolution toward a better future.

So instead, they offer grants for street art and watch the businesses die, secure in their moral superiority.

The Green Party’s Housing Hypocrisy.

The bitter irony is impossible to ignore. The Green Party ran for Bristol City Council on a manifesto promising to increase affordable housing from 600 to 1,000 homes per year. They positioned themselves as champions of ordinary Bristolians struggling with the cost-of-living crisis.

Yet when their transport policy destroys the livelihoods of working-class business owners in Barton Hill – one of Bristol’s most deprived areas – the response is a grant scheme that can’t cover rent, wages, or utilities.

The Green Party manifesto explicitly committed to “create low traffic neighbourhoods by calming and curbing traffic on selected streets” and completing “proposed East Bristol and South Bristol schemes.” They weren’t hiding their intentions.

But promising to reduce traffic and actually managing the economic consequences of that reduction are two different things. The Greens excel at the former whilst demonstrating institutional indifference to the latter.

Brighton’s Warning: The Green Governance Collapse Nobody Mentions.

Bristol isn’t the first city to experience Green Party governance, and it’s instructive to examine what happened elsewhere.

Brighton and Hove, which became the UK’s first Green-controlled council in 2011, saw the party’s representation collapse from 23 councillors to just 7 over the following decade. The Greens lost their majority in 2015 after a single term marked by internal divisions, budget crises, and accusations of incompetence.

Bristol’s Green administration is now following a familiar pattern: ambitious progressive rhetoric coupled with poor implementation and unwillingness to address the practical consequences of policy choices. The adaptation grant debacle is exactly the kind of tone-deaf response that alienates the communities these policies are supposedly helping.

The Consultation Theatre: Asking Questions, Ignoring Answers.

The East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood went through extensive “consultation” and “co-design” processes. The council held workshops, drop-in sessions, and online engagement exercises. Residents and businesses were invited to share concerns and suggestions.

And then the council implemented the scheme anyway, with businesses reporting they were blindsided by the severity of the impact on their trade. Some residents in the Somali community around Barton Hill said they believed they were being consulted on general improvements to their area, rather than on measures to restrict traffic.

This is consultation as performance art. The council goes through the motions of listening, then does what it planned to do from the beginning. When negative consequences emerge, they can point to the consultation process and claim they followed the proper procedure.

Deniece Dixon’s complaint about the council “closing Avonvale Road via Google Maps last year without informing any of the small businesses” reveals how superficial the engagement actually was. If businesses directly affected by road closures weren’t informed about those closures, what did the consultation actually achieve?

The South Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood: Will They Learn?

Bristol City Council is now consulting on the South Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood scheme, which covers Southville, Bedminster, Windmill Hill, and surrounding areas. The consultation closed on 30 October 2025.

Will the council learn from the East Bristol disaster? Will they conduct proper business impact assessments? Will they provide adequate compensation rather than insulting “adaptation grants”?

The Bristol Cable’s analysis suggests some procedural improvements: consultation done in partnership with community organisation Action Greater Bedminster, more than 6,000 responses, fifteen community events including in places of worship and community centres.

But procedural improvements mean nothing if the fundamental issue remains unaddressed: What happens to businesses that lose revenue when traffic patterns change? Who compensates them? Or is collateral damage simply acceptable as long as the vision is pure?

What Should Proper Compensation Look Like?

Let’s be clear about what genuine support would involve:

Immediate Revenue Support: Direct compensation for documented trading losses during the first 6-12 months of scheme implementation. Businesses should not bear the financial burden of policy experiments.

Rent Relief: The council should negotiate with landlords to provide rent holidays or reductions for affected businesses, subsidising the difference if necessary.

Business Rate Suspension: Automatic suspension of business rates for businesses within affected zones for at least 12 months.

Relocation Assistance: For businesses that cannot viably continue in their current location, comprehensive relocation support, including moving costs, lease deposits, and fit-out expenses.

Redundancy Support: If businesses must close, proper redundancy payments for staff should be funded by the council, not left to struggling business owners.

This is what actual support looks like. Not cargo bikes and street art.

The Questions Bristol Should Be Asking.

• Where is the business impact assessment? Did the council actually analyse the economic consequences before implementation, or is this catastrophe unfolding exactly as predicted?

• What’s the acceptable casualty rate? How many businesses is the council prepared to see close before admitting the scheme needs modification?

• Who benefits from this transition? When working-class businesses in deprived areas close, who replaces them? Will the “liveable neighbourhood” be liveable for the people who currently live there, or for a different demographic entirely?

• Where’s the accountability? When these businesses close, will anyone at the council face consequences for failing to protect them? Or is this just the cost of progress?

• What happens to the “liveable” neighbourhood when the businesses serving it are dead? Who will provide food, services, and community spaces in Barton Hill once Cafe Conscious and its neighbours are gone?

The Institutional Delusion at City Hall.

This adaptation grant scheme reveals a profound detachment from cause and effect that would embarrass a concussed toddler. The logical sequence apparently makes perfect sense inside the hermetically sealed bubble of City Hall:

1. Implement traffic filters that prevent customers from driving to businesses

2. Watch businesses lose money because customers can’t reach them

3. Offer grants for literally everything except the actual problem

4. Act genuinely surprised when businesses call this insulting

5. Maintain with a straight face that businesses just need to “adapt”

6. Repeat steps 1-5 whilst wondering why businesses keep closing

This isn’t governance. This is institutional delusion dressed up in sustainability rhetoric and tied with a bow made of pure cognitive dissonance.

The people making these decisions inhabit a parallel dimension where “Liveable Neighbourhoods” are axiomatically good, where concerns about business viability are just reactionary grumbling from people who hate the planet, and where offering grants for street art demonstrates genuine commitment to supporting local enterprise.

They’ve convinced themselves that businesses failing is just the free market doing its thing—never mind that they fundamentally altered the market conditions these businesses operated under, without their consent, against their protests, and despite their warnings.

Meanwhile, in the actual reality the rest of us inhabit, human beings with names and families—Deniece Dixon, the owners of Hamblins, the Spar operators—are watching their life’s work die in real time whilst the council offers them essentially nothing, pats itself on the back for its generosity, and wonders why everyone seems so ungrateful.

It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of showing up to a house fire with a single cup of water, throwing it on the inferno, and then invoicing the homeowner for your heroic firefighting services.

What Businesses Can Actually Do.

For businesses trapped in this nightmare, here are your realistic options:

Apply for the grant anyway: Even though it won’t solve your problem, take what you can get. Document everything. Keep records of your trading losses, customer feedback, and the impact on your business.

Coordinate with other affected businesses: Collective action has more impact than individual complaints. Consider legal action as a group if the losses are substantial enough.

Go public: Local media coverage has already highlighted the issue. Continue sharing your story. The Bristol Cable, Bristol24/7, and Bristol Live have all covered the controversy.

Contact your councillors, especially Labour councillors who are calling for compensation. Make them understand the human cost of the scheme.

Demand proper impact assessment: Force the council to document the damage they’ve caused. Freedom of Information requests can reveal what analysis was done (or wasn’t done) before implementation.

Consider legal action: If the council’s actions have made your lease unviable or caused quantifiable financial harm, consult a solicitor about potential claims.

What This Actually Needs: A Strategy That Might Work.

The conventional legal route – suing the council for negligence or seeking judicial review – faces enormous obstacles. Courts give local authorities wide latitude for transport policy decisions. Litigation costs money these businesses don’t have and takes years they can’t afford to wait.

But there’s a more effective approach: collective action, political pressure, media exposure, and the credible threat of legal action to force the council to negotiate proper compensation.

Here’s why this works:

The Political Calculation.

Bristol City Council is led by the Green Party with just 34 seats out of 70 – two short of an overall majority. They’re governing in a committee system that requires cross-party cooperation. They’re vulnerable.

Labour councillors are already calling for business compensation. The Lib Dems hold two committee chairs. The Conservatives, whilst small in number, can amplify criticism. A unified opposition focused on the business crisis could paralyse the Green administration’s entire transport agenda.

The Media Weapon.

Deniece Dixon’s story is media gold: a community hero who kept Barton Hill fed during Covid and the Barton House evacuation, now being destroyed by the council she served. That narrative writes itself.

Every business closure becomes a news story. Every family losing their livelihood becomes evidence of the Green Party's incompetence. Every “adaptation grant” rejection letter becomes proof of institutional callousness.

The Bristol Cable, Bristol24/7, and Bristol Live have already covered this extensively. National media love stories about idealistic councils destroying working-class livelihoods. The Daily Mail would have a field day.

The Judicial Review Threat.

You don’t actually need to win a judicial review – you just need to credibly threaten one. The embarrassment of a judicial review application alone, with its discovery process revealing exactly what business impact assessment the council did (or didn’t do), might bring them to the table.

Discovery in judicial review would force the council to disclose:

• All internal communications about business impacts

• Any business impact assessments (or their absence)

• Meeting minutes discussing compensation

• Financial modelling of the scheme

• Consultation responses, they ignored

Can you imagine what those documents would reveal? The council knows. And they know that judicial review proceedings are public.

The Strongest Argument.

The winning argument isn’t “you broke the law” – it’s “you implemented policy that’s destroying community institutions without adequate mitigation, and the political cost of that should terrify you.”

Here’s what businesses should demand:

Immediate Actions:

1. Emergency compensation fund: Direct revenue support for documented trading losses, not grants for cargo bikes

2. Business rates suspension: Automatic for all businesses in affected zones for 12 months minimum

3. Rent relief scheme: Council-subsidised rent reductions negotiated with landlords

4. Proper impact assessment: Conducted by independent consultants, published in full

5. Scheme modifications: Bus gates turned off or exemptions expanded until compensation is in place

Political Leverage Points:

• Full Council motion: Force a vote on proper compensation. Make every Green councillor defend the indefensible on the record

• Committee system: Use the multi-party committee structure to block other Green transport initiatives until this is resolved

• Budget pressure: When the next budget comes, demand business compensation be included or threaten to vote it down

• Local Government Ombudsman: Formal complaints about maladministration – investigations are public and embarrassing

Media Strategy:

• Weekly press conferences: Different business owner each week sharing their story

• Social media campaign: #SaveBartonHillBusinesses with daily updates on losses

• Photo documentation: Empty shops, closed shutters, “For Sale” signs – visual evidence of decline

• National media: Pitch the story to outlets that love “woke council destroys working-class livelihoods” narratives

The Nuclear Option: If all else fails, businesses should publicly announce they’re instructing solicitors to:

1. Seek judicial review of the decision-making process

2. Pursue negligence claims for failure to conduct adequate impact assessment

3. Challenge the legality of the “adaptation grant” scheme as inadequate mitigation

Even if those claims ultimately fail, the process would be catastrophic for the council’s reputation and paralysing for their wider policy agenda.

Why This Works.

The council’s vulnerability isn’t legal – it’s political. They’re a minority administration implementing controversial policies in one of Bristol’s most deprived areas. They’re ideologically committed to liveable neighbourhoods, which means they cannot be seen to fail.

Business closures in Barton Hill, with all the attendant media coverage and political opposition, make them look incompetent. That threatens their entire transport programme, their credibility on housing and poverty, and their prospects in future elections.

Proper compensation is cheaper than that political cost. The council knows it. Businesses need to make them admit it.

The strongest negotiating position isn’t “we’ll sue you” – it’s “every business closure is a media story, every media story is political ammunition for your opponents, and every day this continues, your majority gets weaker.”

What Businesses Should Do Tomorrow.

1. Form a coordinated group: All affected businesses meeting weekly, single spokesperson, unified demands

2. Hire a solicitor: Not to sue (yet), but to write threatening letters that the council’s legal department will take seriously

3. Contact opposition councillors: Labour, Lib Dems, Conservatives – offer them political ammunition

4. Document everything: Trading losses, customer feedback, delivery problems – build the evidence file

5. Go loud: Weekly media appearances, social media campaign, public protests

6. Demand the meeting: Formal meeting with council leader Tony Dyer and L Pondweed himself, with media present

The council has the money – the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood cost £6 million. They have the power to provide real compensation. What they lack is the political will.

Give them a political reason to find that will. Make the cost of inaction higher than the cost of action.

That’s not idealism – it’s how power actually works.

The Verdict: Bristol City Council’s PhD in Institutional Incompetence.

If there were a doctorate in institutional incompetence, Bristol City Council would be awarded it with full honours, a standing ovation, and probably a commemorative plaque celebrating their groundbreaking contribution to the field of bureaucratic absurdity.

Let’s recap their achievements:

• Implemented a scheme that predictably harms local businesses (gold star for foresight)

• Failed to conduct adequate business impact assessment (or conducted one and ignored it—unclear which is worse)

• Offered “compensation” that explicitly excludes actual compensation (chef’s kiss of doublespeak)

• Framed business failure as entrepreneurial deficiency rather than policy consequence (victim-blaming as high art)

• Maintained moral superiority throughout whilst destroying community institutions (the audacity is almost beautiful)

• Patted themselves on the back for offering grants whilst businesses close their doors forever (self-awareness has left the building)

This is what happens when councils prioritise abstract visions over concrete reality. When ideology trumps evidence. When the people making decisions are so thoroughly insulated from consequences that they genuinely believe street art and cargo bikes constitute meaningful support for businesses haemorrhaging money by the day.

It’s the policy equivalent of a doctor amputating the wrong leg, refusing to acknowledge the mistake, and then billing the patient for crutches whilst insisting the sudden inability to walk is completely unrelated to the surgery.

Deniece Dixon and her fellow business owners in Barton Hill aren’t asking for the scheme to be scrapped. They’re not demanding the moon. They’re asking for something revolutionary: to survive. They’re asking the council to take responsibility for the economic carnage its policies have caused.

Instead, they get grants for benches.

Benches.

While their businesses burn, the council offers outdoor seating. While they count mounting losses, the council suggests improved signage. While they face closure, the council recommends street art.

It would be funny if it weren’t so catastrophically cruel.

Bristol, you’ve excelled again. When future historians study institutional failure in British local government, when they compile the greatest hits of bureaucratic dysfunction, the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood adaptation grant scheme will occupy a place of honour in the Hall of Shame.

It will sit alongside poll tax riots and the Millennium Dome as a masterclass in how to take a defensible policy goal, implement it with staggering incompetence, ignore all warnings, offer inadequate mitigation, blame the victims, and then act mystified when everyone’s furious.

The emperor has no clothes. The council has no answers. And the businesses have no future – unless something changes dramatically, and fast.

Because here’s the thing, the council still doesn’t seem to grasp: when you destroy the businesses that serve a community, you’re not creating a “liveable neighbourhood.” You’re creating a dead one.

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Related Reading:

• Bristol Labour’s Statement on East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood

• Cafe Owner Slams Council’s ‘Underhand Tactics’ - Bristol24/7

• Residents Say Liveable Neighbourhood Will Be ‘End of Barton Hill’ - Bristol24/7

• East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood - Bristol City Council

• How Will Bristol’s Second Liveable Neighbourhood Scheme Work? - The Bristol Cable

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