Planning application 25/11779/P
Bristol Civic Society previously reviewed this planning application and submitted comments to the council in August 2025. We have now reviewed our comment, and revised them taking into account the additional information posted on Bristol City Council website in December 2025. Our August 2025 comments show that the Society was supportive of the application but with some reservations. We had hoped that these reservations would have been addressed in the submission of revised information. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
We welcomed the linkage through to the Soap Works and the view of the historic building but suggested that the view could be bettered by reducing the footprint of Building 4, but this has not been implemented.
The previously proposed small underground car park has been changed to surface parking, which severely reduces the amount of public open space. We suggest that the ten required spaces could be adjacent to the west side of Building 4, closer to the entrance to building 3, accessed via the existing archway in the Goldsmiths Building.
The proposed height of Building 3 is unchanged and is higher than the Assembly building on the opposite side of Temple Way; it should be the same height or lower. No account has been taken of our suggestions regarding how the elevations could be improved to give the building a more distinctive and slenderer corner and reduce its mass as seen from Temple Way and Avon Street.
We noted concern about the height of building 4. There is no change in the parameters noted on the revised drawings; the building breaks the skyline above the listed buildings on Broad Plain. The site of building 4 is the ideal location for the residential elements granted in the extant outline permission; the northern side of the notional footprint would be further from the backs of the adjacent listed buildings on Broad Plain, and the building would be lower and so not dominate the listed buildings.
Willie Harbinson