Landmark house building development announced by Bristol City Council

Ambitious plans to deliver more than 100 new homes have been unveiled by Bristol City Council.

The move is a major council landmark since it will include the first wholly council-funded new council homes for more than 30 years.

in addition to providing 12 new social-rented homes the scheme will also include the delivery of 100 affordable homes by other social landlords.

The 12 council houses will be built on land including former council garage sites in Eastville, St George and Lawrence Hill and will include 11 five-bedroom houses and one six-bedroom property.

The scheme will be 100 per cent funded through the council’s new, city-controlled, Housing Revenue Account.

Councillor Anthony Negus, Cabinet Member for Housing, Property and Regeneration, said: “Finding ways of creating new affordable housing in the current economic circumstances is extremely challenging and I am delighted to announce what will be a very important contribution to a key priority.

“The first part of the scheme will be the development by the council of 12 new affordable homes; the second is the releasing to other social landlords of 50 sites a year for two years in order to realise 100 new affordable homes.

“These schemes, together with other initiatives such as the Local Mortgage Scheme, launched last year, which is helping first-time buyers get on to the property ladder, and our No Use Empty scheme which is currently bringing more than 500 private empty properties a year back into use, will go some way towards helping all those people in Bristol who are looking for a home.”

Under the second part of the programme, sites for 100 new homes, many of them also former council garage sites but including some PRC houses (pre-cast reinforced concrete), located across the city, will be disposed of over two years at £1 a site to Registered Providers.

The remainder will form the subject of consultation and the sites to be selected will be announced in due course.

The council’s contribution to this aspect of the new-build scheme will include the disposal of sites worth between £1.5 and £2 million, a £2 million enabling and private sector renewal grant and a £350,000 land-enabling budget.

The aim of the Garage Strategy is to look at each of the 300 council-owned garage sites with a view to either selling the site, investing in it to bring garages up to a good standard, or investigating the site for alternative use.

During the 1920's and after 1946 many PRC (pre-cast reinforced concrete) council houses were constructed in Bristol. Due to their non-traditional construction methods they could be built quickly and cheaply. However, the construction methods and materials used resulted in them having inherent structural defects. This led to the introduction of a programme to either renovate them, where this was economically feasible, or to demolish them.