I'm Joe Banks, freelance journalist, written for people like Vice, and I've written locally written for the Bristol cable. I became interested in a development in the in the Old City, in the historic historic center of Bristol, which was for three large office blocks, which was very controversial. It was very large, way out of scale with with what remains of the old City. Most a lot of the old city in Bristol was destroyed in the in the bombing in the second World War. Half of it is now is now a park because because that that whole area of the old city was was just obliterated. And it was in one of these committees, and it's it's in the minutes that they have a discussion, and they say it would be it would be good for for members and officers to set up a a friends off group. Right. That's that's that that was the phrasing. You know? So that that this is a top down thing they're talking about. So and and then the Facebook group appeared a week later after that, an astroturfing community group. There there'd been a history in this location Mhmm. Of local opposition to previous schemes that tried to take a chunk of the park. And, yes, it turned out so the developer had put the community group right at the center of their community engagement, you know, which all developers have to to go through as part of the planning process. And you'd had this guy giving a statement to the actual planning meeting where where where the planning application was determined by councils and telling them that the the members of of of this community group were were in favor of the proposal at ten to one. But he'd it turned out he'd he'd got that figure from counting emojis on the Facebook page, so not the most scientific, of of of basis. And I and I wasn't actually very switched on in terms of local governance issues in Bristol and planning and development, but it sparked my interest. And then I was looking into this into this this Facebook group and they're all because but by the time that I was interested in it and started looking at it, the the the planning application had actually it it had been given permission. Then then I got into into the the free of information requests and looking at how trying to work out how the whole process had unfolded. And so, actually, it was my first experience of putting in freedom of information request. What correspondence had had had occurred between the council and this sort of pseudo community group. But then I yes. I saw all these other requests related to this specifically to this development. I didn't know who they didn't know who they were by, but they had a lot of interesting material in them. The next stage was trying to see what had been going on between the the planning department and the developers. There's a a pre application process before a a planning application goes before council, particularly for for big developments like this in very sensitive locations. There's there's a back and forth with the planning officers looking at the designs and saying where where they think it's good and where it doesn't meet the the demands of the local plan, which is what what planning applications are assessed against. That was my freedom of information request, right, trying to get further insight into it. I mean, that's a formal process. It's letters that are sent, pre act one, pre act two. Yeah. So I was able to get ahold of those. I knew from emails that were in these other pre information requests from other people that there had been basically four pre app stages, but what came back from my request only went to the third. So I didn't have to go back, you you know, and say I know you've got a I know you've got a fourth. Can I have that, please? Yeah. If I hadn't if I hadn't had the other information from the other requests, I wouldn't have known that existed. And that fourth one was the letter from the the head of development management. Basically, what he was saying in that reiterated what what the officers have been saying all along. This development, is not acceptable. It's too big. It's too bulky. This was the same planning man you know, head of development management who had sat in the planning meeting encouraging the councilors to vote for an unchanged proposal. Stage four was was was his was his letter and the final letter from the planning department to the developer before they were gonna put in their application. He's reaffirming, you know, what the council have been saying all the way through this process. This this this design is not acceptable. You then fast forward, I think, a month on from that. They put the planning application in, which is unchanged. The the committee meeting comes around It was about six months later, and he's in that meeting, yeah, recommending approval. Well, this is something he'd previously said said was unacceptable. And that and, again, this was through the other freedom of information requests that other people have put in. You could see the email correspondence between the cabinet member for city planning, one of the main contacts for the developers in the council, and she was agreeing to to to have, meetings with the commercial director of the developer. There were also meetings with the the executive director for growth and regeneration, so that's one of one of the three most senior officers in the council Mhmm. And the head of the mayor's office. People have been putting these freedom of information requests in talking about interference. What they were talking about predominantly was interference from the mayor's office who was supposed to be completely detached you know, legally. It's supposed to be completely detached from the planning function of the of the of the council. So you could see these these these meetings happening, and and and and they and they were happening just after historic England had put in their official opposition to the development. I also verified through Freedom of Information request

I imagine that they were not not wanting to to to to put those on record. You know, the shadow system in planning, you know, which is going on, outside the the the the the public facing process. And, yeah, I think people should be held accountable for that because we it's so important that we that the public can see how this is happening. What, you know, what a great idea that this is this is publicly available to everyone to access and see, you know, see the request, see the response, then use, you know, using it quite often now. Yeah. It's just very well put together. I think it works really, really, really brilliantly. Yeah. The way you can see all those free inform information requests for a particular institution is great. Yeah. No. I think it's a fantastic resource. Yeah. I couldn't I couldn't have actually drawn a picture of that whole process without having access. As with getting that that fourth pre application document, I had to know that it existed. Otherwise, I never could have made them give it to me. I think that's a big question. There's a big question around how Freedom of Information operates, and and you'll get false often false exemptions that they're putting up that you then have to get to an internal review, point out, you know, go through the ICO, the legislation,