#Bristol's Green Experiment: Killing the Golden Goose While Claiming It's Thriving. Part 2.
Sold the parachute, now selling the plane: £430k wasted on a failed Bottle Yard sale the council won't explain.
Bristol’s Green Experiment: Killing the Golden Goose While Claiming It’s Thriving. Part 2.
After selling the parachute, they’re selling the plane mid-flight – £430k wasted, zero buyers, and they still won’t prove The Bottle Yard is profitable.
BRISTOL’S GREEN EXPERIMENT: PART 2
In Part 1: Selling the Parachute Before You Jump, I exposed how Bristol’s Green administration is dismantling essential economic infrastructure while claiming everything’s fine – selling assets before proving they have alternatives, making decisions based on ideology rather than evidence.
Part 2 examines what happens when the same administration manages Bristol’s “success story” – The Bottle Yard Studios.
They lost £25 million when Casualty moved to Cardiff in 2011. Fourteen years later, they claim record-breaking success but refuse to prove the studio’s profitable. They tried to sell it. Nobody wanted it. It cost £430,000 to fail.
Same experiment. Same pattern. Different disaster.
→ Start with Part 1: Selling the Parachute Before You Jump
Reading time: 5 minutes
Look, I’m no economist. I left school at 15, I’m neurodivergent, and my understanding of high finance extends to knowing that spending £430,000 on absolutely fuck-all is probably not great fiscal management.
But apparently, that makes me more financially literate than Bristol City Council’s Green administration.
The Golden Goose Bristol Once Had (And Pissed Away)
Let’s start with what Bristol lost. When Casualty moved from Bristol to Cardiff in 2011 after 25 years, it cost the city’s economy an estimated £25 million annually Bristol-business. That’s £350 million over 14 years – real money generating real jobs, supporting real businesses, putting Bristol on screens worldwide every single Saturday night.
The BBC moved it to Cardiff as part of their “let’s spread production around” strategy. Fair enough. Cardiff got 48 episodes per year of consistent, year-round production. Bristol got... well, we’ll get to that.
The Replacement: The Bottle Yard Studios
Bristol City Council opened The Bottle Yard Studios in 2010, transforming a former Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry bottling plant into Bristol’s answer to losing Casualty, WikipediaThebottleyard. Eight stages. Purpose-built. Council-owned. The crown jewel of Bristol’s UNESCO City of Film status.
And here’s where it gets interesting.
In 2024-25, filming at The Bottle Yard and Bristol locations generated an estimated £46.6 million economic impact from 29 major productions across 736 filming days – a 55% increase on the previous year Filmbristol.
Bloody brilliant, right? Record figures. Massive growth. Bristol’s film industry is booming!
Except... not quite.
The Methodology Magic Trick.
The 2023-24 economic impact figure of £30 million was almost 50% higher than 2022-23’s £20.1 million – not because of actual growth, but because “this is the first time Bristol’s figures have been calculated using the new Average Local Production Spend Rate Card recently launched by Creative England” Filmbristol.
In plain English, they changed how they count the money to make the numbers look better.
And here’s the kicker: When Bristol Film Office hit £20.8 million in 2021-22, their Senior Film Manager, Laura Aviles, called it “the highest economic contribution generated by film and High-End TV production that we’ve seen in a decade, since the BBC took the decision to move Casualty’s production to Cardiff in 2011” Bristol City of Film.
A decade to match what they had before losing Casualty. And that’s with creative accounting.
Show Me The Money (Narrator: They Won’t)
Now here’s where your bullshit detector should be screaming.
Bristol City Council refused a Freedom of Information request asking for basic financial figures – how much The Bottle Yard costs to run, how much income it receives, and whether it’s actually profitable Yahoo!.
Their excuse? “Detailed financial records are considered commercially sensitive as disclosure of such detail could impact the studio’s ability to operate in this market.” Yahoo!.
Translation: “If we told you the real numbers, you’d ask awkward questions.”
But wait, it gets better. During a council meeting, a senior officer told councillors that The Bottle Yard did, indeed, make money for the council, but the public has not been told any more than that.” Yahoo!.
So it’s profitable. Trust us. We just can’t prove it. Because... reasons.
The Sale That Wasn’t (But Cost £430k Anyway)
If something’s profitable and successful, you’d think buyers would be interested, right?
Wrong.
Bristol City Council found a “preferred bidder” and entered a three-month exclusivity period to sell The Bottle Yard’s leasehold, but “it has not been possible to conclude an agreement for the sale.” BroadcastDeadline. The identity of this phantom buyer? Never revealed - Broadcast.
Why were they selling this “profitable” studio generating “record impact”? Because the current ownership model has “hit a glass ceiling”, C21media and the facility requires “multi-million investment over the next few years.” Yahoo!
So let me get this straight:
It’s making record impact (£46.6m!)
It’s profitable (they promise!)
But they can’t afford to invest in it
So they tried to sell it
And nobody wanted it
And the failed sale cost taxpayers £430,000 BristolWorld
All while Bristol City Council faces a £52 million budget gap Bristol City Council.
The Green Dream Meets Economic Reality.
Here’s what the Greens inherited: a functioning studio, a Labour review considering investment options, and a genuine question about long-term sustainability.
Here’s what they did: pushed for full privatisation, failed to privatise it, spent £430k in the process, and still refuse to prove whether it’s actually profitable.
Labour councillor Tim Rippington nailed it: “£430,000 would have made a world of difference to our local libraries, street cleaning teams, or local authority schools” BristolWorld.
The Emperor’s New Film Studio.
Look, that £46.6 million “economic impact” includes crew wages, hotel stays, restaurant spending, equipment rental – essentially everything the film industry touches Filmbristol. It’s not money going into council coffers.
What the council actually gets:
Filming permit fees from 689 permits processed in 2024-25 Filmbristol
Whatever The Bottle Yard charges for studio space (unknown – “commercially sensitive”)
Indirect business rates and council tax increases (marginal)
Meanwhile, the council’s 2024/25 budget is £1.2 billion Bristol. That £46.6m economic impact? Even if 10% translated to actual council revenue (generous), that’s £4.6m – less than 0.4% of their budget.
And they still can’t prove it’s profitable.
The Brutal Truth.
You don’t need an economics degree to see the pattern here. Bristol lost Casualty’s consistent £25m annual impact in 2011. Fourteen years and one failed sale later, we’ve got a studio generating impressive-sounding numbers the council won’t verify, that requires investment they won’t provide, that nobody wanted to buy when offered.
Cardiff still has Casualty. Bristol has creative accounting and £430k less than it had before trying to sell something nobody wanted.
If you have a golden goose, you feed it. You don’t claim you can’t afford bird seed while spending £430k trying to sell it to buyers who don’t exist, all while refusing to prove the eggs are actually gold.
That’s not economics. That’s just common sense cutting through institutional bullshit.
And sometimes, the most obvious conclusion is the correct one: Bristol’s Green administration is killing the golden goose through a combination of ideological blindness, financial incompetence, and bureaucratic self-protection disguised as “commercial sensitivity.”
The film industry could be Bristol’s economic engine. Instead, it’s a black box generating impressive PowerPoint slides while the council cuts libraries, street cleaning, and social care.
Welcome to Bristol. Where the council can’t afford to invest in success, but can afford £430k to fail at selling it.
Key Facts Summary.
Bristol Film Industry Economic Impact:
Casualty move to Cardiff (2011): £25 million annual loss
Current Bottle Yard impact (2024-25): £46.6 million claimed
Methodology change explains 50% of recent “growth”
Took 10 years to match pre-Casualty figures
Council Financial Transparency:
FOI requests refused citing “commercial sensitivity”
No public proof of profitability despite claims
Failed sale to unnamed “preferred bidder”
£430,000 wasted on the collapsed sale process
£52 million council budget gap
The Bottom Line: Bristol City Council claims record success while refusing to prove profitability, failed to sell an asset nobody wanted, spent £430k in the process, and continues cutting essential services while hiding behind “commercial sensitivity.”
Note to readers: Every fact in this article is sourced, cited, and verifiable through official Bristol City Council documents, Bristol Film Office reports, and Freedom of Information responses. Bristol City Council has consistently refused FOI requests for The Bottle Yard’s financial details, citing commercial sensitivity. The £430,000 cost of the failed sale was confirmed by the council in response to councillor questions. All economic impact figures come from Bristol Film Office’s own published reports. No speculation – just documented institutional incompetence.
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Related Reading:
Part 1: Selling the Parachute Before You Jump – How Bristol’s Green administration dismantles infrastructure while claiming success
Bristol Green Party’s Housing Promises vs Reality
How Bristol Lost £350 Million When Casualty Moved to Cardiff
FOI Requests Bristol Council Doesn’t Want You To See
Cardiff vs Bristol: The Film Industry Tale of Two Cities
In 2019 it was reported "Bristol Energy 'might not make profit for five years'"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-49293475
We all know how that ended.
Deja vu?
As at 16/03/2024 the rateable value of Bottle Yard was £710,000
Council tax payers are also indirectly paying that bill.