A huge Youth Zone, part of a national network, will be opening in 2026 by the Imperial Retail Park. But is it what this side of the city needs? And will young people feel welcome, no matter what postcode they live in?

credit: Stefano Ferrarin

“I can do the splits,” says Bethany, and shows us. “This is how close I can get.” Another girl shouts: “I can do a one-handed cartwheel!”

I’m at the Youth Moves youth club at the Park Centre on Daventry Road in Knowle West, asking what local kids think about the massive new 224 Youth Zone centre opening in spring 2026 in south Bristol, by the Imperial Retail Park between here and Hartcliffe. At time of writing, construction had just begun.

It will be open seven days a week and have a sports hall, music studio, dance studio, podcast studio, gym and climbing wall, and more than 20 activities on offer. It’s part of a national network of Youth Zones built by Lancashire-based charity OnSide, and will be run by Bristol charity Youth Moves and partners. When it opens, the Knowle youth club will move and operate exclusively from there.

The year fours I’m talking to are excited. “It’s gonna be way more bigger… and there’s gonna be a lot more stuff to do,” says Isabel.

“There could be a lot more children… you might meet lifelong friendships there,” says Poppy. “The expanding of the children!” adds Bethany.

“Be careful, mind,” says 16-year-old volunteer Lily to the girl doing the cartwheel. It goes off without a hitch.

Since being announced three years ago, the new centre’s price tag has drawn controversy. Bristol City Council will pay half of its £8.4m construction, plus £3.28m towards building an access road and levelling the site, and contribute £400,000 annually from its £825,000-a-year Targeted Youth Services Budget for three years towards running costs. The latter pot of money is already severely stretched, meaning existing youth services providers are scrambling to find alternative funding.

A number of people – including Hartcliffe-born councillor Tony Dyer, who has since become leader of Bristol City Council – have questioned whether one huge centre for all of south Bristol is better than smaller, localised youth services. There is also concern that 224 being in Knowle West – albeit only just – will deter kids from Hartcliffe from going, given longstanding animosity between the areas.

‘Postcodes’

Leaving Youth Moves, I walk past the site of the Youth Zone, and onto the Hartcliffe Club for Young People. There doesn’t seem to have been the same amount of engagement here – and many haven’t heard of it. It feels strange for a journalist to be explaining to these kids that they’re getting a new youth service next year, almost like I’ve come to promote it.

Breaking down barriers should have been an ongoing exercise, starting two years ago, because it takes time to develop these things

Web Matthews, Hartcliffe Club for Young People

“It hasn’t been massively talked about,” says lead youth worker Simon Long, adding that Youth Moves did an information session with the juniors, but not the seniors. “I would hope [engagement will step up closer to the opening],” he adds.

Eventually I find someone who knows what I’m talking about. One of the kids, 16-year-old Payton says children from Knowle will go, but is less sure peers from Hartcliffe will be up for it. Why? “Postcodes.” Payton says the problem is with older kids “claiming they’re like gangsters”. The Youth Zone could help, she says, but “it depends what kids go over there”.

I then corner 16-year-olds Codie and Seth as they’re playing pool. “I think it’s a good idea,” begins Seth, but then adds, “I don’t know to be fair. I didn’t know they were doing it.” But Codie thinks “getting people from two different postcodes together” could be good, especially with “all the things that have happened” recently.

In January, Mason Rist, 15, and Max Dixon, 16, were fatally stabbed in Knowle West, shaking the community, with their murderers driving from Hartcliffe hunting for people responsible for an attack on a house there in a case of mistaken identity. In November, Antony Snook, 45, from Hartcliffe, who drove the attackers, was found guilty of murder and jailed for at least 38 years. Riley Tolliver, 18, and three boys, aged 17, 16 and 15, were also found guilty of murder and will be sentenced on 16 December.

Jackie Eddy, an experienced local youth worker who took redundancy during cuts in 2012 and is now a trustee and volunteer at Hartcliffe Club for Young People, describes the Youth Zone as “empire-building” and says she’s concerned about its location.

“A building of that size, with all those facilities is damn fantastic, [but the location is] the biggest mistake they’ve made,” and would be better on Hengrove Park, she adds. “That’s nobody’s territory. [If they’d] built it there, I could have seen some success from it, because Hengrove and Whitchurch have no youth provision.”

Jackie says when the youth zone was first announced in 2021, there was too little consultation with experienced youth workers “about viability, whether this was a good idea and whether it was going to be supported”.

Web Matthews, manager of Hartcliffe Club, adds that work on repairing relations between the areas is long overdue. “How are young people from this area going to go to Knowle when what exists is hostile? I haven’t seen anything that has tried to break down those barriers.

“That should have been an ongoing exercise, starting two years ago, because it takes time to develop these things,” he adds. “So there’s going to be issues. Naturally. Question is, can they overcome them?”

‘A risk worth taking’

James Creed, a Youth Moves senior youth worker who is buzzing about 224, believes so. “Provision for young people in south Bristol has been chronically underfunded,” he says.

“[224 has] taken all these things we know are so valuable to young people but aren’t necessarily accessible in areas like this – music, sport, arts, craft – and put it at their fingertips, in one place, in the middle of where people live.”

Having this purpose-built building is going to be amazing – especially for Hartcliffe

Kerry Bailes, Hartcliffe councillor

James and his colleagues have checked out other Youth Zones. “I’d love to see more in Bristol if this is successful,” he says. “Obviously, we think it’s gonna be a massive success – and if so, potentially a blueprint.”

James says 224 will be a neutral place, welcoming to everyone. “We’re not just going to open straight away, bang, everyone in,” he says. An outreach programme to all south Bristol schools is planned, along with ‘soft openings’, enabling different groups to visit and get to know the space.

James adds that the centre will be big enough for everyone to spread out, making clashes less likely. “If we had a load of young people from Hartcliffe turn up to a session here, there would be more potential for conflict, because everyone’s suddenly on top of each other.” He also believes “some of these concerns [about friction] are coming from people that are looking for concerns”.

Kerry Bailes, a Hartcliffe Labour councillor, thinks 224 will benefit the whole of south Bristol – “especially Hartcliffe”. She points out that when the neighbourhood was designed it was meant to have five youth centres, but ended up with only three, one place-based youth centre and a mix of youth organisations doing detached work. “So having this purpose-built building is going to be amazing”.

Bailes, a former youth worker, says she hopes the new services will offer “an opportunity to repair relationships” between communities. She adds that transport could be a problem since Hartcliffe lost the 36 and 52 buses, and hopes that the council will put on minibuses to get kids from the estate to the Youth Zone.

Once there, the building has been designed to be accessed without going into Knowle West proper, via bus stops on Hartcliffe Way, with a new drop-off bay also under construction.

“We’re not naive, we know [this is] a risk, but I think one worth taking,” says James. “I think it’s gonna make the situation better, not worse.”

Taking money from existing youth work 

There’s no denying things have worsened in recent years. Back in Hartcliffe, Jackie Eddy explains that the area suffered “massively” in previous rounds of cuts. “We weren’t even sure we would survive,” she says, adding that Hartcliffe and Withywood went from three full-time youth centres, plus a full-time detached team, “to this – the only youth provision left”.

The Hartcliffe Club for Young People will lose yet more funding when 224 opens, with OnSide paying £600,000 to cover the Youth Zone’s pre-opening six months and first year, and the council stepping in from 2026 to provide annual support from its Targeted Youth Services budget. Simon Long tells me the club will have to find alternative funding or cut some provision, potentially losing one session a week.

Christine Townsend, a Green councillor who chairs Bristol City Council’s Children’s and Young People Policy Committee, said: “Decisions made by the Labour cabinet [under former mayor Marvin Rees] in 2023 mean that from the next financial year, the youth services grant budget will be £825,000 a year, with £400,000 of that funding being spent on the revenue support for the Youth Zone for the next three years.

When Labour took this decision, it did so knowing local youth service providers would be impacted, Townsend added.

“This Labour-promoted youth service model also looks to raise investment in youth services [and] we are told contributions from private investment will mean that the total investment into youth services will be over £1 million a year,” Townsend added. “Grants will remain available to youth service providers to align work across public health and communities services to ensure a joined-up approach to supporting local targeted support.”

The Youth Zone project predates the pandemic, with work already underway at the site in May 2024 when the council transitioned from the mayoral to the new committee model of governance, she said.

“The concept and funding structures were well publicised, and labour councillors [including Kerry Bailes] were elected in south Bristol wards in 2021 and 2024 on manifestos that continued to support both the delivery of the Youth Zone and this established funding model,” Townsend pointed out.

Despite the looming pressure on his own service, Simon says he will support kids to visit the Youth Zone, and plans to put on a minibus so they can visit. “We’d be stupid [not to] – if we’re going to lose £400,000 into something else, it needs to get used,” he says. Making it work is “in everybody’s best interest”.

On that at least, there is agreement between all sides. “Obviously, this is costing the council money,” says James. “But I think [224] is something worth investing in.”

Time will tell whether young people from Hartcliffe, as well as Knowle West, come to the same conclusion.

The Bristol Cable