Row reignites over Bristol City Council's withdrawal from two major housing schemes

CGI of how the Baltic Wharf housing will look
-Credit: (Image: JTP)


A row has reignited over Bristol City Council’s controversial decision to withdraw from two of its major housing schemes. Homes & housing delivery policy committee chairman Cllr Barry Parsons (Green, Easton) made the shock announcement last week that the authority’s housing firm Goram Homes would no longer buy a total of 171 homes as planned at the Baltic Wharf development and part of Hengrove Park.

Although the properties will no longer be council homes, it is hoped they will instead be taken up by a registered provider – formerly called housing associations. It sparked an outcry from Labour councillors who said the decision was undemocratic because it was taken by senior officers in consultation with Cllr Parsons and committee vice-chairman Cllr Richard Eddy (Conservative, Bishopsworth) in a secret “backroom deal” – a description the Greens denied – and was not brought to the meeting on Friday, September 20, for a vote.

Now Cllr Eddy has hit back at Labour, accusing them of “shameless carping, hypocrisy and shedding crocodile tears”. He said Labour was “totally responsible for the appalling housing crisis”, having run the council for eight years before the Greens took over following May’s local elections, as well as the recent damning findings by the Regulator of Social Housing that concluded there were “serious failings” in the standard and management of Bristol’s council housing.

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Labour said Cllr Eddy’s narrative was “clearly a work of fiction” which audaciously ignored the Tories’ “14-year-long, brutal austerity campaign”. Cllr Eddy told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “It is utterly astonishing to listen to these criticisms from Labour councillors who are totally responsible for the appalling housing crisis Bristol City Council now finds itself in.

“Left-wing politicians might like to bleat about the so-called ‘austerity’ policies of the last Conservative government, but the truth is that the Labour Party has run Bristol City Council for almost all of the last half century. The recent damning indictment of the state of Bristol’s social housing stock by the Regulator of Social Housing is a testament to the failure of successive council administrations to maintain basic health and safety standards for the tenants who live in our council houses.

“The new Green-led administration is to be congratulated for urgently recognising the scale of the problem, setting up the homes & consumer standards programme to remedy these deficiencies and treating our naturally concerned tenants in an open and transparent manner. The difference with the secretive Labour mayoral administration before May is very distinct.

“Naturally, the cost of remedying these grave failures will amount to multi-millions of pounds.” He said the council was committed to fixing the issues as quickly as possible and that residents would appreciate that it had to make savings to prioritise this work, including transferring investment in social housing at Baltic Wharf and part of Hengrove Park to one of its registered partners.

Cllr Eddy said: “In this way, we will still achieve significant amounts of social housing. It is utterly galling to hear Labour councillors criticising this responsible move and ignoring their direct responsibility for the appalling mess they have landed the council and our tenants in.

“Labour’s absurd allegations about ‘behind-the-doors backroom deals’ is especially nauseating since every member of the homes & housing delivery committee was informed about likely social housing changes in July. This was a far more democratic and transparent arrangement than existed under Marvin Rees’s autocratic mayoral regime before the local elections in May.”

A Bristol Labour spokesperson said: “It’s no surprise to hear a true-blue veteran Tory coming out to bat for the Green Party, after they teamed up to quietly pull the plug on key council housing developments. In only March this year, the council unanimously approved a 30-year plan for council housing which received input from all political parties.

“The minimum the public should expect is that any changes to this plan would happen transparently in public, where councillors have the opportunity to vote on any changes and residents can make their views known. As we said, the standard of council housing and tenants’ wellbeing always needs to be the council’s first priority.

“These works are crucial and of course need to come ahead of new house-building plans.” But they said there was not enough evidence to say that scrapping new council housing projects was necessary for the improvement plans to go ahead.

The spokesperson said: “The Housing Revenue Account is a ring-fenced account that can only be spent on council housing. Building new homes is paid for by borrowing, only the interest is paid from that account.

“However, new council homes means more rent revenue, which means more funding to invest into housing standards in the medium and long term. The 30-year housing plan ensures the housing department is sustainable long into the future.

“Ripping up parts of it behind closed doors, with no democratic input, will put the plan at risk and only harm it in the long run. The Labour government has already taken measures to make council house-building more viable, and we are awaiting the Autumn statement which may set out changes to council finances.

“Any backroom deal before then is premature. As the council leadership acknowledges, the standard of council housing is a national problem due to decades of underinvestment.

“Cllr Eddy’s attempt to lay the blame entirely at local government whilst ignoring the Conservatives’ 14 year-long, brutal austerity campaign is audacious. His narrative is clearly a work of fiction.”