Let's get the Council moving on Grove Wood

Grove Wood at full council from 6pm on Tuesday 21st June 2011

It is now over a year since Bristol City Council’s Cabinet declared their intention to designate Grove Wood a Local Nature Reserve and compulsory purchase it from the landowner if they could not reach an agreement with them.

Well precious little seems to have happened in the last year as far as we can tell. We know that the Council sent a letter to the landowner in November 2010 offering to buy the wood from him, but no official proceedings to declare the wood a nature reserve seem to have started. We can only assume that nothing is being done.

We are therefore going to lobby the next full Council meeting on Tuesday 21st June at 6pm. We have submitted a series of questions to the Council for the appropriate Councillor to answer so we can find out what is going on.

You can help put some more pressure on Bristol City Council to get moving by sending in a statement telling them exactly how you feel about this situation. Please send in a statement in your own words, but you might like to tell them that:

• Snuff Mills Action Group and the local community have been campaigning for over 3 years to get Grove Wood in to safe hands
• Thousands of people signed a petition to seek the declaration of Grove Wood as a Local Nature Reserve
• The landowner appears to have very little respect for the woods, local people or the attempts of the Council to resolve the situation
• The Action Group is seeking to make Grove Wood a Town Green, but this would not get it in to safe ownership or ensure that it is properly looked after
• It’s time the Council helped the local community in its efforts to save Grove Wood by compulsory purchasing it from the landowner

But this is really the time for you to say why you think Grove Wood should become a nature reserve and tell them how disappointed you are that nothing seems to be happening.

Please keep your statement polite and send it to democratic.services@bristol.gov.uk no later than noon on Monday 20th June. If you send us a copy, we will paste it on to the blog for others to see, to give them ideas.

If you wish to speak to the full Council meeting, let them know and don’t forget to join us outside the Council House on College Green at 5.45pm for yet another protest – bring those trusty banners from other protests or make a new one!

Everyone in Snuff Mills Action Group thinks it's time for the Council to take action - help us make that happen.

Fossil Walk - Thursday 9th June, 7-9pm

400 million years ago Snuff Mills was part of a massive river delta in warm tropical seas. Fallen trees were buried in the sand of the delta and these are now fossils hidden among the tough pennant sandstone that makes up the rocks of the valley. Come and see them for yourself with local fossil enthusiast, Steve England. We can't offer you dinosaur bones, because they hadn't evolved 400 millions years ago, but the fossils that we have are fascinating.

The walk starts from the Snuff Mills car park and the gates will be open.

Laundry Field news

Snuff Mills Action Group submitted an application for Laundry Field to become a Town Village Green last week. It is now nearly two years since the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) bought the field, along with Blackberry Hill Hospital. While we had hoped to be able to agree with the HCA about the future of the field, we have put in a Town Village Green application to ensure we have recourse to this process if negotiations with them over the future of the land are not successful.