One of Bristol’s biggest providers of affordable housing has defended its decision to build only 75 affordable homes in a huge inner city development and build the rest for the open market.
Places for People, which describes itself as one of the country’s ‘leading affordable homes-led placemakers’, is so far only meeting the minimum 20 per cent affordable homes requirement in its proposals for the big Dove Lane site close to the bottom of the M32 in St Pauls.
The former paper factory next to St Pauls Leisure Centre was cleared more than a decade ago and has laid empty and unused ever since, with a series of grand plans over the years never coming to fruition.
Read more: New plans for 350 homes in centre of Bristol - but only 20 per cent 'affordable'
But now Places for People, which is one of Bristol City Council’s major partnership organisations, is about to submit another planning application to create a new neighbourhood there, with blocks of flats and a total of 350 new homes. The organisation’s initial consultation period, ahead of a formal planning application, has now ended. And the feedback from local residents in St Pauls has not been positive for Places for People.
Of 100 comments on an interactive map on the project’s website, around half were negative about the proposals, and only nine were labelled by the developers themselves as ‘positive’ - the rest were just labelled as ‘ideas’. Many of the comments were criticisms of the tall buildings proposed and the density of the development, as well as some about the low number of affordable homes.
Places for People said its team would be taking on board all the comments provided by people before submitting a planning application - and pointed out that the 20 per cent proportion still met the council’s housing policy. For years, Bristol City Council’s policy was to require developers to include 40 per cent affordable housing in developments in the centre of the city. But in 2018, in a bid to kickstart a number of stalled major developments, a new policy was introduced that relaxed that condition to just 20 per cent.
That allowed developments like the huge one at Castle Park View to go ahead, with developers constructing the tallest residential building Bristol has ever seen as part of a 350-home project with 20 per cent affordable homes. At Dove Lane, Places for People have unveiled plans for a new ‘community’ area which links the leisure centre with St Pauls Park.
The development of 350 new homes will also only include 75 classed as affordable. Bristol Live asked Places for People why it, as a specialist in affordable housing, was only proposing 20 per cent affordable homes, and for its reaction to the feedback it had received so far.
A Places for People spokesperson said: “We continue to work closely with Bristol City Council so that we can meet the city’s housing policy, and it is also important for us to understand the views of the community. We would like to thank the local community for the feedback we recently received through our multi-channel consultation to involve as many people as possible.
"So far we have received approximately 300 responses with 200 completed feedback forms and 100 comments on our online mapping tool. The consultation allows us to gain both positive and negative feedback to inform our plans.
“We continue to welcome the community’s view and comments. Ongoing feedback allows us to understand the needs and requirements of the council and local community. The feedback we receive will be considered and, wherever possible, responded to through the plans. We continue to engage with the local community and update everyone with our plans,” he said.
Mayor Marvin Rees said the issue of trying to get developers to build affordable homes in the city centre and in the inner city areas around it were complex and challenging, and he was concerned at the forces of gentrification and urbanisation that could create a situation where the central areas of Bristol were left largely as the preserve of those who could afford to live there, while the outer areas of Bristol were largely the places where affordable homes are built.
Bristol City Council and its housing delivery company Goram Homes have announced big plans for 1,000 new affordable homes - but almost all of them are in the outer areas of the city, particularly in Lockleaze, Lawrence Weston, Hengrove and Knowle West.
Meanwhile, in areas closer to the city centre, like St Pauls and Bedminster, big developments are taking place with fewer affordable homes included. “There’s a context to this,” said Mr Rees, when asked about the council’s record on getting developers to meet the council’s original 40 per cent affordable housing target.
“Despite some of the claims of the opposition, I'm not all-powerful. Austerity doesn’t just mean pressure on frontline services, it means you lose backroom capacity, lawyers, planners, those people who go to negotiations with big companies. There’s contests over viability with developers, and put that viability question in line with the point we’ve been making to Government when talking about finance.
“Brownfield sites in the middle of the city can often be more complex. They can be polluted, they are difficult to get to and more expensive to build out. So the more expensive they are to build out, the greater the pressure there is on getting that share of affordable.
“We can say ‘ok we want you to get it done, because we need affordable houses now, and if you bring it forward and get it done, if you give us 20 per cent, you can get it done’, or we can contend with you for the next five years and nothing happens on that site.
“There’s a judgement call to be made there - do you get your affordable homes now, and have the momentum and everything that brings, or do you wrestle and potentially have nothing for a number of years.
“On other sites, we don’t own the land. Where we do own the land, we’re in a strong position and you can cite those numbers, but there are other numbers you can cite where we are bringing forward a phenomenal number of affordable homes.
Read more: Bristol council chief admits he has 'very little power' to make developers build affordable homes
Read more: House price rises 'off the scale' as Londoners move west
“Each site is different because it has different features and different complexities to it,” he said, adding that the council chiefs are warning developers that they would prefer to deal with developers who have a track record in delivering affordable homes.
“We’ve been very clear with developers that we are big landowners in the city,” he said. “We are looking for partners to work with on our land, and lots of people want to work in Bristol. But when we are looking for our partners, we’re very interested to know what your track record was when you were working on your land.
“We’ll be looking at that. So it’s in your interests to make sure you are delivering on your own land.
“We will meet our own target of 1,000 homes by 2024, so if there’s a subtle suggestion there that we’re not really committed to affordable, I don’t think that’s really fair or accurate, because that’s not our record. If it’s that we’re not serious about the housing crisis, again that’s not fair or accurate too.
“If it was easy to do it, everyone would be doing it. But we’re still driving on and doing it, and holding ourselves accountable to very high standards. The context has changed now. When we came in no one believed Bristol wanted to get things done. There was no momentum. The changing nature of the city, the commitment to delivery, they didn’t believe.
“When we are looking at housing, there are lots of sites coming through - like Frome Gateway. We are bringing forward homes that are affordable for people in the middle of Bristol, and it’s been a real drive for us - that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
“The pressures are there. One of the things we can do is make sure we’ve got quality rental properties that aren’t then consumed by the market and passed on and used as assets.
Read more: Veggie and gluten-free pie from Pieminister in Bristol crowned best pie in Britain
Read more: Council finally start to fix Bristol's flooded baptism roundabout
“There are forces for gentrification, these are challenges facing cities all over the world, and they face Bristol as well. We are alive to them, and Step 1 is to be alive to them.
“Step 2 is to make sure we are straining every sinew to make sure we are getting our share of affordable homes. It is a concern to us, because these are the forces of urbanisation as they are now.
“The forces of urbanisation used to be money left the middle of the city and went to the suburbs. But now those forces have changed direction, and we have to be alive to them.
"But every development we go into, we contend for our share of affordable. Where we have the land - when we look at Western Harbour, for example, it’s one of the reasons it’s such an attractive regeneration opportunity, is because we do control the land down there, and we will be able to bring forward, when we get the solution, a fantastic scheme, on the waterfront, luxury homes that include the affordable - same with Baltic Wharf, a Goram Homes site,” he added.
Want our best stories with fewer ads and alerts when the biggest news stories drop? Download our app on iPhone or Android
Read more: Hartcliffe's baptism floodwaters slowly begin to recede
Read more: Bristol Airport expansion plans challenged in High Court by environmental campaigners
