More than 1,200 council houses will be sold off in a “fire sale” and two more council housing projects canned under bombshell plans by City Hall chiefs to balance the books. Bristol City Council has also proposed to delay £17million of tower block refurbishments, £3.9million of new sprinklers in high-rises and some fire safety assessments by at least a year.
The authority is considering withdrawing from a contract with its own housing company Goram Homes and developers Vistry for 135 council homes at New Fosseway and Dovercourt Road. It would follow the surprise announcement in September to abandon Goram’s projects at Baltic Wharf in the Harbourside and part of the enormous new Hengrove Park neighbourhood.
The homes would still be built but it is hoped that a social housing provider would buy and manage them instead of the council. The opposition Labour group has slammed the proposals, accusing the Green-led administration of being “not only morally bankrupt – they’re financially incompetent”, adding that “Bristolians have been conned” by the ruling group.
Green council leaders say the ring-fenced housing budget, called the housing revenue account (HRA), which can only be spent on council homes, faces an £8million shortfall in 2025/26, so cuts need to be made. The local authority needs to tackle a major backlog of repairs after being ordered to do so last year by the government’s Regulator of Social Housing which found “serious failings” in how it manages council homes.
It means millions of pounds previously agreed to improve properties have to be pushed back to focus on meeting the regulator’s demands and bring houses and flats up to scratch. A report to the sub-committee, published without notice on the agenda papers on Friday morning (January 10) said: “The HRA currently has 700 non-residential properties (offices, shops, garages, open land etc) and 1,222 residential properties which are increasingly expensive to maintain and would generate significant capital receipts if sold.
“The capital receipts could be reinvested into delivery of new council homes or to invest in existing stock.” It said: “There is the option to withdraw from contract with Goram & Vistry at Dover Court and New Fosseway.
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“There will be a sunk cost of c. £300k but c. £20million in capital would be released in 2025/26 and 2026/27 for use on improving the condition of current stock (eg, additional money for roofs, windows, bathrooms, etc) and/or exploring options to secure targeted delivery in areas of regeneration where other government funding is involved, with expected housing delivery targets. As with the recent decision not to progress with the HRA delivery of homes at Hengrove 1b and Baltic Wharf, Goram intend to dispose of the agreed units to a Registered Provider (RP).
“These properties are highly sought after, lower density sites and it is not anticipated that the appetite from RPs would be a challenge.” Labour said the Greens had “attempted to sneak out their plan to sell council houses and stop building new ones through an annex to a budget report” to next week’s meeting following pressure from Labour to publish their plans.
It said the proposals to pull out of contracted schemes with Goram to allow the council to borrow money for improvements to existing council homes, rather than build new ones, made no sense because council policy was to not borrow money for day-to-day repairs as this should be met within the existing budgets. Labour’s housing lead Cllr Paul Goggin said: “The Greens’ plans are not only morally bankrupt – they’re financially incompetent.
“George Ferguson faced protests when he tried to sell off 40 council homes. The Greens are trying to sell off 30 times that number.
“I’m genuinely shocked and hope this will be a wake-up call for anyone that sees them as a progressive party. Bristolians have been conned. I live in a council home, I know what it’s like to experience the insecurity and constant limbo of the housing waiting list.
“I feel for the 22,000 households on the social housing waiting list and those in temporary accommodation who are going to have to wait longer for a secure roof over their head because of this. They haven’t even said they want social housing providers to buy these 1,222 homes, like they hope for the schemes they’ve already scrapped.
“The Greens are carrying out a fire sale of Bristol’s public assets, flogging them off to the highest bidder. I have no reason to believe they won’t do the same with our council homes.
“These plans are entirely counterproductive and will cost the council more in the long run. Less social housing in Bristol means the taxpayer coughing up even more to spend on temporary accommodation, making the council’s budget position worse. Their decision to gut the council house-building pipeline is equally awful.
“Their plans also state they are stopping refurbishment works in tower blocks and discontinuing part of the essential sprinkler programme in high rise blocks. They need to come clean and tell tenants affected by these changes.”
A report to the sub-committee said the health and safety of council tenants and leaseholders, along with providing accommodation for homeless people, were key priorities. It said among the projects “excluded from consideration” for next year were “the installation of sprinklers, not relating to Waking Watch, which was forecast to cost £3.9million”.
Renovations to tower blocks costing £17million that had not started would be delayed due to “deliverability and affordability challenges”. A £4.4million plan to install ground-source heat pumps would be delayed by two years, white fire-risk assessments not required by law would also be deferred.
The report said: “The budget will focus efforts on the health and safety of current occupants of social housing in response to the recent regulatory judgement and the most vulnerable members of community. The trade-off is a reduction in non-statutory work to social housing and the council largely handing over responsibility for new acquisitions to RPs.
“These are very difficult choices necessitated by the need to prioritise resident safety, meet statutory requirements and manage significant financial pressures on the HRA account.” In a blog post last month before the detailed plans were announced, homes and housing delivery policy committee chairman Cllr Barry Parsons (Green, Easton) said: “By far the biggest problem facing the HRA is the extra spending that’s required to ensure our housing stock is safe, in good condition and meets the needs of residents
“We can’t escape the fact that our housing stock is made up mostly of properties at least 50 years old. This is a challenge as older properties need more work to maintain, to keep warm, and are often more difficult to refit when new standards come into force.
“The current plan we have to reduce our revenue spending includes delaying some works that are non-urgent and aren’t required to meet legal standards.
We expect these works to take place at some point but not in the next financial year when they were originally planned to happen. We must also look to the future and avoid any unnecessary revenue spending, primarily any new debt repayments which can be avoided without harming our current housing stock or jeopardising the delivery of new homes.
“We are looking at our list of planned future investments that require borrowing to pay for them, and assessing where we could take a different approach. This includes looking at some housebuilding projects where the council would have to borrow money to buy these homes from a developer.
“There are some sites that have been identified where it isn’t necessary for the council to buy the homes because we are confident that there are other social housing providers who could do so. Other large, one-off investments we’re having to reconsider include a planned programme of kitchen replacements, some refurbishment programmes that have yet to begin and delaying the installation of ground-source heat pumps.
“We’ll be looking to work with government to unlock grant funding to carry out some of these programmes instead of spending HRA funds. But we’re not proposing any sudden hike in rents.
“No decisions have been made yet on how we will balance this budget but it’s clear that difficult choices must be made now, or we run the risk of failing to balance the finances next year and into the future. The consequences of that scenario are severe with the likelihood that we’d be forced into positions that would have negative impacts for people living in council housing.”