Bristol Zoo gets Apr25 Save Bristol Zoo public launch cancelled w quick call to Bristol Beacon boss!

Everything Bristol Zoo and Bristol Beacon said as we share the emails on zoo campaign they didn't want people to see

Beacon bosses have paid thousands in compensation

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/everything-bristol-zoo-bristol-beacon-10553430

A man who tried to launch a major campaign to save Bristol Zoo has received thousands of pounds in compensation from the Bristol Beacon - because the venue cancelled his booking for the launch event after the boss of the zoo privately intervened. Bosses at the Beacon, which is owned by the city council, later tried to silence campaigner Tom Jones by offering compensation, but only if he dropped his attempts to investigate the cancellation and sign a non-disclosure agreement.

https://politicsthisweek.gn.apc.org/2025/10/not-the-bcfm-politics-show-presented-by-tony-gosling-260/

Mr Jones, from the Save Bristol Zoo campaign, booked one of the venue spaces at the Bristol Beacon to hold a public meeting on April 29 this year. The event was to be a public meeting to launch a renewed campaign calling on Bristol Zoo to make a U-turn on its decision to close and redevelop the site in Clifton.
Mr Jones had raised thousands of pounds from a fundraising appeal and spent that and his own money on marketing and publicity for the meeting. What happened next left people who donated questioning what had happened to their money, and Mr Jones initially unable to talk about it.
Hundreds of people were expected to come to the high profile event. Mr Jones said former zoo staff and an international zoo expert would speak out about the zoo’s current strategy of closing the Clifton site and expanding at the Bristol Zoo Project in South Gloucestershire.
Last November, Bristol Zoological Society’s boss Justin Morris told Bristol Live one of the issues he had with the campaigns to stop the zoo’s redevelopment was that campaigners had never put forward viable alternative plans. Mr Jones said the purpose of the public meeting at the Beacon was to offer an alternative vision.
The meeting was timed in late April this year to coincide with the start of a separate judicial review, which saw other campaigners in Clifton challenging the council’s decision to award planning permission for the redevelopment of the zoo site in the courts.
Mr Jones’ Save Bristol Zoo launch event was heavily publicised. He spent thousands of pounds to print and deliver leaflets advertising the event to 35,000 homes around Clifton and Bristol, as well as spending thousands more from money he had raised to present the 'alternative vision' for a reopened Bristol Zoo, after working with former employees and industry experts.
The cancellation
Seven days before the event, Bristol Beacon told him they had cancelled his booking. Emails seen by Bristol Live show that earlier that day, Bristol Zoo chief executive Justin Morris emailed Simon Wales, his counterpart at the Bristol Beacon, to raise concerns about the event - and just a few hours later, Mr Jones was told the booking had been cancelled, with no discussion.
Mr Jones didn’t receive a refund of his booking fee of a little over £1,000 until after the date the meeting was supposed to happen and, with all the publicity material advertising an event at the Bristol Beacon, he said he reluctantly had to cancel the event altogether. He said there was no time to find an alternative venue and none available - and there was no way of contacting the 35,000 homes that had received flyers, to tell them the venue had changed.
Mr Jones immediately demanded to know why his booking had been cancelled, and Bristol Beacon’s management eventually said his event ‘breached the hire agreement’. Three weeks later, he received an email which finally gave an explanation.
“You will appreciate that, as a registered Bristol charity, hosting an event that was widely publicised online for the purpose of rallying against another Bristol charity’s board raised significant concerns for us, both from a public safety and reputational perspective,” the email from Bristol Beacon chief executive Mr Wales said.
It added a reference to clauses in the booking terms, including one which ‘covers activities that might pose a danger to public safety, including the safety of persons present at the event and any of our staff’, and another which allowed the Bristol Music Trust - the council-owned charity which runs the Beacon - to cancel an event if it ‘poses a risk to Bristol Music Trust’.
“After careful thought, the decision was made to cancel your booking based on the above Information,” Mr Wales added.
Mr Jones claims the booking was taken with Beacon staff knowing what the event was going to be about, although the Beacon disputes this.