Campaigners in Southmead want the decision to sell off one of the area's green spaces to be reconsidered.

A total of 1,651 people signed a petition opposing Bristol City Council's proposals to sell the open land at Elderberry Walk for development.

Hundreds of letters and emails to the city council repeated the plea.

A further 482 people signed general petitions against the selling off of green spaces in the area.

But instead of saving Elderberry completely, Bristol City Council cabinet has decided to sell off part of the land for development.

Some residents now feel that the council has not listened to their views.

Alison Devonshire, of the group Friends of Elderberry, said: "We don't want to lose any of this beautiful parkland.

"We've lodged our views but it seems officers have gone ahead with their report for disposal or partial disposal.

"The cabinet have tried to concede with a smaller loss of parkland but this isn't acceptable – we want our park to remain as it is in its entirety, it's so beautiful and peaceful."

The Henbury and Southmead area had one of the largest responses to the green spaces sell-off plan with 409 pages of public responses.

But of the 10 sites threatened with sale only two have been saved – Okebourne Road and Embleton Road.

Five more will still be sold; two more will be sold, pending further research on flooding issues and one has been deferred for further consultation – Crow Lane.

The council says selling off green spaces is necessary to help invest in other parks.

During the consultation period residents were asked to fill in questionnaires saying which of their local parks they thought it most important to invest in, and which investments in each park they wanted most.

Of the 85 questionnaires returned for this area, residents said Elderberry Walk was most in need of improvements.

Yet the improvements prioritised by residents were potentially among the cheapest. The most favoured option by 90 per cent of people was "retaining area grassland while managing some areas as a wildflower meadow". Building houses on the site was by far the least popular option.

The comments picked out from the questionnaires by officers focus on the potential development rather than improvements but only one supports the idea of any building on the site on the grounds that "housing is better than travellers".

All of the public responses had the names removed when the council published them last month.

One resident said: "Elderberry Walk is already overlooked by houses, mine is one of them. I think the space should simply be maintained as it is." Another read: "The best thing that could be done with this green space is to leave it alone."

Badock's Wood was the second most popular area for an upgrade, according to the questionnaires.

Local people felt the most important improvement would be to "raise awareness of problems caused by dog-waste bags". This was followed by "continue with the services of a park keeper".

New dog waste bins and the upgrading of boundary fencing to stop the illegal entry of cars and off-road bikes also scored highly.

New entrances and signs were considered the least important.

Only a handful of specific comments are picked out in the officers' report.

One said: "This lovely informal green space should be left alone as far as possible. The introduction of litter bins and dog waste bins are probably the only improvements that are really needed."

Arnall Drive open space came bottom of the list on areas that need improving.

Money raised from land sales will be added to funding from developers, grants and the parks departmental budget and then divided between areas in the city.

Residents will be able to have their say on where the money should go at Neighbourhood Partnerships meetings, and over the next six months a "shopping list" of improvements will be drawn up for each area.

Council spokesman James Easey said: "Those green spaces which will be made available for disposal will now go into the Site Allocations plan, and the usual planning process – this will determine when and if developments occur over the next 20 years.

"But as officers made clear these areas will of course continue to be maintained up until that point."