Fail to plan, plan to fail

Our last blog post looked at an email from Sandra Fryer, Chair of Governors of Cotham School (and Chair of the Bristol Civic Society) that was disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information request. Here’s another from the same batch: an email sent by Ms Fryer to Hannah Woodhouse, BCC Executive Director of the Children and Education Directorate (pages 19-20 on this link).

The email is dated 4 September 2025 and sets out plans for a meeting between representatives of Cotham School and BCC in the week before the Economy & Skills Committee was due to consider making an Article 4 Direction to remove permitted development rights at Stoke Lodge. It’s worth noting that an Article 4 Direction wouldn’t mean a fence was impossible at Stoke Lodge, but that Cotham School would have to go through a transparent planning process including community consultation and consideration of equalities, tree, wildlife and heritage impacts – a prospect the school previously described as ‘devastating’.

In the email, Ms Fryer includes some special pleading aginst the possiblity of the Committee making an Article 4 Direction, saying that having to make a planning application would be a ‘huge risk’ to the school.

Ms Fryer claims that the community has ‘objected to every single planning application on this site since 2011’, with the implication that officers have recommended that the school’s applications should be granted and politicians (i.e. councillors) have been swayed by community pressure into going against officer recommendations.

Let’s just test how truthful that is, shall we?

Here’s the list of planning applications that have been made by Cotham School since 2011:

• 16/06304 – new perimeter fence to playing fields
• 17/00864 – replacement changing room building
• 17/06665 – erection of new changing room building
• Appeal of rejection of above decision
• 18/05206 – retrospective application for installation of sign
• 20/01826 – installation of a CCTV pole and camera adjacent to the gate near the Adult Learning Centre
• 25/14649/PINS – application to install 8 CCTV poles and cameras
• 26/11466 – works to install 8 CCTV poles and cameras

The 2016 fence application is particularly interesting because the fence proposed then was almost identical to the fence that the school put up in 2019 and again in 2025. Officers said that the fence was ‘not sympathetic to the historic lodge and its parkland setting’; that it would result in ‘an unpleasant experience for users of Stoke Lodge’; that it was ‘unnecessary in regard to safety as the school makes use of the site in daylight hours when incidents of trespass without detection would be difficult’; that it ‘makes for a more threatening environment’ and that ‘restricting access to a 5m strip in parts is a provocation’. In fact the officer’s report was so damning that Cotham School withdrew the application altogether – but apparently didn’t take on board any of those learning points because they chose to do all the same things (and worse) in later fencing operations.

Then there were two applications (and one appeal) to rebuild the pavilion on site. Everyone agreed that the old derelict pavilion needed to be replaced. There was no objection in principle from the community or anyone else. But the problem was that the school wanted to increase the size of the pavilion by 50% and had absolutely no plan to deal with the increased intensity of traffic that would result, on narrow residential roads and with no car park. The proposal was rejected twice by BCC and once by the Planning Inspectorate, purely based on transport and highway concerns: ‘the proposal would give rise to unacceptable traffic and highway safety conditions’; ‘the technical highway considerations relating to the current proposal have not been satisfactorily addressed and it therefore conflicts with the Development Plan’. And yes, the community shared those concerns – but this doesn’t fit with Ms Fryer’s narrative at all.

Then there’s one application for advertisement consent, for a sign right next to the listed building. Officers recommended approval, on the basis that the wording on the sign wasn’t a relevant factor for consideration. Councillors disagreed, saying that the playing fields should be considered the curtilage of the listed building; that the wording on the sign was offensive and threatening and that ‘The sign, by virtue of its nature and the wording it contains, would be harmful to amenity and would also be harmful to the setting of the nearby listed Stoke Lodge’. And yes, there were a lot of community objections to this sign (also including the fact that it misnamed the land ‘Cotham School Playing Fields’ which has never been the name of this historic parkland). This was the meeting at which one councillor said he had never known a school to go to war with a community like this. Perhaps this is a planning decision Ms Fryer can legitimately point towards – although the point of planning committees is to decide planning applications, not to rubber-stamp officer decisions. But let’s also note that since 2019, it no longer uses that misleading and threatening language on its signs. So perhaps it took note of what councillors said on that!

Since 2020 the school’s applications have all been about CCTV.

• “Can we install a 7 metre high CCTV tower by the listed building?”
  No – because of heritage, trees and privacy concerns.
• “Can we install eight 6 metre high CCTV towers all around the parkland including one by the listed building?”
  No – because of heritage, trees and privacy concerns.

Now they are trying for a third time. And yes, members of the community are objecting – wouldn’t you?

But the issue here isn’t ‘councillors overriding officer recommendations about perfectly good planning applications’ as Ms Fryer seems to want BCC executives to believe. It’s that the plans aren’t good enough. They persistently ignore the heritage status of Stoke Lodge and the historic landscaped parkland surrounding it. They are wholly and intentionally antagonistic to the local community who love, use and protect this open space.

So here’s an idea to solve Cotham’s problem:

Make better plans. Find better planners.

Try to understand someone else’s point of view and work out an acceptable solution – after all, this is land that the school signed up to share and not to build on.

Stop misrepresenting legitimate community and officer concerns as a campaign against the school.

Stop trying to commercialise a heritage landscape, and instead realise that it’s a wonderful thing for your pupils to be able to enjoy PE in such beautiful surroundings, and we welcome them doing it!