Bristol school refused permission for CCTV cameras on its playing fields | Bristol Live

The controversy over Stoke Lodge continues

A Government planning officer has refused a Bristol school permission to erect CCTV cameras to monitor its playing fields, in a decision that has left the school ‘disappointed’ but local campaigners pleased.

Cotham School submitted a planning application to be allowed to put CCTV cameras on the Stoke Lodge playing fields, and now said it intends to review the decision made by the planning officer to refuse the request.

The school said its fences and timed lock mechanism have all been the subject of vandalism, as the long-running row over the use and access to the fields continues. The school has announced it intends to resume using the Stoke Lodge playing fields for PE lessons this week, for the first time in around six years.

Cotham School erected a fence around the inside of the Stoke Lodge playing fields, in Stoke Bishop around two and a half miles from its school site, last year after winning a court case to confirm the site was legally school playing fields and not a ‘Town or Village Green’.

But since then, the school said the fence it erected has been damaged, and CCTV cameras were installed, which the school then asked planning permission for.

That has now been refused, leaving the school faced with the prospect of facing enforcement action from the city council’s planning team, or appealing against the refusal decision.

What the planning officer said

Cotham School’s planning application was processed by a Government Planning Inspectorate planning officer - Bristol’s planning department is still in special measures and many planning applications are still being dealt with by the Planning Inspectorate to try to reduce the huge backlog of decisions people were waiting years for.

The inspector decided that having CCTV cameras dotted around the Stoke Lodge playing fields would ‘cause harm’ to the listed building and heritage setting of Stoke Lodge itself, as well as cause privacy issues for nearby residents.

The school said that, like most schools, having CCTV covering its playing fields was routine and needed for security, and Avon and Somerset police backed the school’s application.

But the planning inspector said that didn’t outweigh the damage to the heritage of the site. “The proposal would cause a harmful loss of privacy to the occupants of the neighbouring properties,” they said.

“Overall, in weighing the issues I find them to be finely balanced. I acknowledge the importance of the proposal to enhancing security on the site and to the safeguarding of children and their best interests, which are a material consideration of significant weight.

“A degree of conflict with the relevant heritage assets is also likely in achieving the school’s safeguarding aims. However, based on the facts of the case which are before me and the

circumstances of the site and its use, I cannot establish that these considerations would amount to public benefits which would outweigh the harm to the designated heritage asset, to which I must give great weight,” they added.

What does Cotham School say

Cotham School told parents on Friday that they would be back using the Stoke Lodge Playing Fields from today, Monday, January 12. That means the gates would be locked while the fields are being used for PE, but there has been a problem.

“From Monday, 12 January, the school will once again use the playing fields during the school day,” the school said in a statement.

“For safeguarding reasons, the site will be locked while in use by the school. Unfortunately, the automated gate electronic access control system has been criminally damaged since the school last had access to the site and is currently inoperable.

“As a result, locking and unlocking the gates requires manual intervention, placing a significant additional demand on school resources. Despite this, the school remains committed to enabling permissive community access to the playing fields outside school hours whenever possible, subject to sufficient staffing resources,” they added.

Cotham School first erected a fence around the inside of Stoke Lodge playing fields back in 2019 - despite local residents trying to physically block the work to install it. In the next few years, the fence was repeatedly vandalised, the school abandoned using its playing fields once again, and the fence was removed.

The school said it was ‘disappointed’ with the planning officer’s decision, and would be examining it carefully to decide on next steps.

"Cotham School is clearly disappointed that the PINs planning decision has refused the proposed CCTV cameras for our School Playing Fields at Stoke Lodge," a spokesperson said. "We are now going to review the PINs planning decision in detail and consider our next steps. We are very clear that we need safe and secure playing fields for our students," they added.

What do local residents say?

The We Love Stoke Lodge group, who have raised and spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in trying to keep the Stoke Lodge playing fields open and accessible to local residents over the past ten or 15 years, welcomed the planning decision.

“Over 200 objections to the application were received and considered by the Planning Inspector.

In its application, Cotham School sought to dismiss the heritage status of Stoke Lodge, even claiming that the fields had never been in common ownership with the listed building and were irrelevant to it,” a WLSL spokesperson said.

“The Inspector dismissed this, stating that ‘the vast openness of the playing fields and its mature trees continue to provide an open and verdant surrounding to the listed building... The Council’s case in this regard is compelling and identifies the value of the playing fields as historic parkland’,” they added.

“The three temporary CCTV compounds that are currently present on site , two in the upper half of the field and one in the middle/lower section, have been found by Bristol City Council to breach planning rules.

“Enforcement activity by BCC was suspended pending today’s decision. We expect that removal of the compounds will now be enforced as swiftly as possible,” they added.

What next for Stoke Lodge?

There are several different aspects to the ongoing battle over what the Stoke Lodge playing fields are, who should have access to them and when. Last year Cotham School won the most important one so far - when a judge confirmed the land should never have been made a Town or Village Green, and should be legally a school playing field.

That gave the green light to the school attempting to fence off the land again, which happened last autumn.

While the site was a Village Green, councillors at City Hall confirmed there were also four public rights of way across the fields, something which Cotham School is now challenging, and a two-week public inquiry into that issue is expected to take place in October this year.