Bristol Wood Recycling: what is a local economy for?

As one of Bristol’s iconic social enterprises is told to leave its city centre site, Giles Simon of Co-operatives UK asks why councils still cling to economic growth as their measure of success

Bristol has the kind of cultural image that many local authorities would die for.

And the Bristol Wood Recycling Project has been a vital part of its alternative scene for fourteen years. From its base next to Bristol Temple Meads train station it symbolises all that is interesting about Bristol, as well as creating jobs, supporting volunteers and reducing environmental impact.

But now Bristol Council wants to sell the land the organisation occupies, putting Bristol Wood Recycling in jeopardy and raising big questions about what a local economy is for and who decides what happens in it.

Bristol Wood Recycling was established in 2004 and was offered ‘meanwhile use’ of land by Bristol Council. Over a decade later, still operating on that site, the co-op is a sustainable business that reclaims disused wood and turns it into valuable products, from firewood to furniture. It has grown into a significant enterprise with nine paid employees volunteers that put in 1,000 days of work a year and it has saved more than 4,000 tonnes of wood from landfill over its lifetime.

As Jonathan Lane, one of the many volunteers who have found a home at Bristol Wood Recycling, says, it is a fantastic place to spend time, ‘it just brings out the sunshine in people this place.’

‘Some people join because it’s a good place to volunteer, because it’s good to be here. Other people join because they want to learn in the workshop. Everybody’s here because they want to be constructive, either for themselves or for other people. My volunteering helps me with one or two issues I’ve had in the recent past.’

As well as supporting them through our business support programme, The Hive, it’s such a brilliant example of the difference a co-op can make that we’ve worked with Blakehouse Filmmakers Co-op to put together a new film to highlight Bristol Wood Recycling, asking why isn’t there one in every city – and it’s been shared over 1,200 times online in just a few days.

So it’s ironic that while we were doing that, cash-strapped Bristol Council issued the co-op a termination of lease in order to sell the land to the University of Bristol for its new campus development. The council is working with Bristol Wood Recycling to identify suitable sites, but currently none have been found.

We’ve just spent two years running the first government–backed community economic development programme in thirty years. It has supported 71 communities across England to develop and implement plans to shape their local economy, from local fishermen in Eastbourne coming together to purchase the harbour to a community organisation giving local people a voice in regeneration in inner-city Manchester.

The report finds that, as well as a real interest among people in having power in their local economy, even when residents have developed a plan for the local economy, they have quite different competing priorities to local authorities.

Put simply, for many local authorities and regional decision-making bodies like the local enterprise partnerships (leps), economic development means economic growth, whether that’s short term income generation or longer term investment. But when local people develop their plans for what they want the local economy to look like or do, conventional indicators of economic growth are pretty low down the list, if they are on it at all. Decent jobs, local ownership, accessible services, higher levels of wellbeing – they are the kinds of measures that local people want for their economy.

And that’s what we see in Bristol too. While the council favours re-development and conventional growth, the folk at Bristol Wood Recycling fear the council’s decision is a threat to the local ownership, social capital and cultural identity that make it is such a vibrant – and desirable – city to live in.

‘Social enterprises like ours add a valuable layer of social and environmental resilience to our communities, a kind of biodiversity’, says Kaleb Debbage, the workshop manager at Bristol Wood Recycling. ‘If we continue squeezing them out of central public spaces we can expect all kinds of hidden costs as inclusive support networks and developing circular economies are marginalised.

‘Local and national government need to be realistic about the limitations of the private sector, and to recognise and nurture the contribution of those sectors which exist to address its shortcomings.’

Bristol Council is selling the land to support redevelopment and there are good reasons for that. But it is also doing what we’ve seen so often, overlooking the benefits that organisations like Bristol Wood Recycling bring to the local economy that cannot be measured in financial terms alone.