Bristol City Council, using a Local Development Order introduced under planning reforms earlier this year, has granted permission for the transformation of a former Diesel Depot in the city’s Temple Quarter, near the busy Temple Meads Station, into a temporary space for practicing urban growing.

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The space can be used for urban agriculture until 30th November 2014. Sheds and renewable energy equipment will be allowed and planners are actively encouraging water capture and storage in water butts to reuse rainwater.

The site has been used for fuel storage by the railway and as such the ground is contaminated. The city planners have said any growing on the site will require 400mm of growing medium or the creation of raised beds to avoid growing in contaminated ground.

Food policy experts, including Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at London’s City University, have called for more to be done to support urban agriculture, which renders cities more self-sufficient and provides benefits for communities.

Speaking about the increasing urbanisation of the population and the need to address this by encouraging urban growing at the Oxford Real Farming Conference in January, Professor Lang said, “Exciting things are happening in towns; people are beginning to grow things, but we need to return to the rampant discussions of the 1930s, when things were in a mess and people argued ‘big picture stuff.’”

The professor, himself a former hill farmer, declared last month that, instead of mounting a “naïve” export drive and ramping up competition, the government should develop a considered food policy, which provides clear social benefits and a path towards sustainability.

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