It was supposed to be ‘shovel-ready’ for the building of a 10,000-seater arena back in 2016, but still more work needs to be done in 2025 to prepare Temple Island for redevelopment.
The city council-owned land close to Temple Meads station could see two large new office blocks, 550 apartments, a 345-room hotel and conference centre, but before work starts on all that, more infrastructure work is required.
Bristol City Council has now awarded itself and its contractors Arup planning permission for a series of ‘common infrastructure works’ which it said are ‘required’ at Temple Island, to enable the big development to happen in the future.
The works include creating a new surface water outfall, diverting and installing underground utilities and extending the road further into the ‘island’ itself. At present the area which is surrounded by the River Avon on two sides and the main railway line and Bath Road to the south, is still completely undeveloped. Two bridges across the river have been in place for almost a decade to access the site from the Temple Meads and St Philips side – the Brock’s Bridge road bridge and a pedestrian footbridge further south.
After the plug was pulled on the use of the site for a large entertainment arena, the previous Labour administration signed a deal with L&G to redevelop the site instead of the building of an arena, and back in August 2022, the deal to build offices, a hotel and conference centre and apartments, was finally signed between the council and L&G.
L&G has agreed to invest £350million to transform the disused site near Temple Meads by building two “major Grade A” office blocks, 550 apartments and a 345-room hotel and conference centre. In return the local authority will spend £32million getting the derelict plot ready, including sorting contamination issues, before leasing Temple Island to the asset management firm for 250 years.
The council will also guarantee L&G rent on the office space for 40 years, an offer deemed “necessary” by mayor Marvin Rees to secure the investment. A notice published in August 2022 on the authority’s website said executive director of growth and regeneration Stephen Peacock had now made the final decision to “enter into conditional disposal” of the land to L&G on a long lease.
Nothing has been built yet, and in 2023, Bristol City Council’s planning department registered a ‘pre-application enquiry relating to a major mixed-use development on Temple Island’. The details of that ‘pre-app’ have not been made public on the council’s planning portal. In this latest planning application, the council planners merely state that ‘advice’ has been ‘issued at three key stages during 2024’.
So that £350 million investment from L&G hasn’t happened yet. Instead, it’s Bristol City Council that need to find more money to prepare the site with these latest infrastructure works.
Back in 2003, the city council undertook a massive decontamination of the site. In 2022, the council gave itself planning permission for more engineering works ‘to enable the Temple Island site for further development’. That involved raising the levels of the land to flatten it out, installing more utilities and what was described as ‘remediation’ work to reduce the risk of ‘contaminative sources’ leaking into the River Avon.
The planners said that, while the former gasworks site was comprehensively decontaminated around 20 years ago, there were still ‘localised’ areas of contamination.
“The application site has a history of industrial uses, including as a rail diesel depot, which has resulted in land contamination,” a spokesperson for Bristol City Council said. “The site has previously undertaken site-wide remediation following the demolition of the former rail depot. However subsequent ground investigations have identified localised areas of residual contamination,” they added.
The biggest part of the latest work will be the creation of new drainage systems for the entire site, with a new larger outfall into the River Avon.
“The surface water drainage is to be updated to increase the capacity of the existing pipework, to suit future development,” a council spokesperson said. “A new outfall to the River Avon is proposed, to discharge stormwater from Temple Island. The outfall structure would comprise a concrete channel and headwall, with rock mattress to be installed below the outfall within the intertidal mud. This would include a stepped access for maintenance. This would require works to be undertaken within the river itself, including the installation of a cofferdam to facilitate dry construction,” a spokesperson said.
Read next:
Temple Island office deal questioned as council to pay rent for 40 years
Fears over council investment in offices at Temple Island amid home working revolution