Tenants have given a mixed reaction to tough new Bristol City Council rules that stop about half of the 19,000 families on its housing waiting list from applying for homes. The restrictions, agreed by Marvin Rees’s cabinet earlier this month, effectively exclude almost 9,500 households deemed to have the least urgent need from the list.
Council leaders were told less than one per cent of those in the lowest priority “band four” were allocated a home through the authority’s HomeChoice website and had been given “false hope” of ever being successful because demand for accommodation far outstripped the available supply. The new policy will mean only a tiny fraction from that group can bid for a property, such as older people in need of sheltered housing, while more people will be assigned a home directly and greater priority will be given for care leavers, tenants looking to downsize, people at risk of homelessness and locals in some areas.
Tenant representative Nigel Varley, of Gilton House, Brislington, accused the authority of trying to “massage the figures” and minimise the true scale of the housing crisis, which people needed to know about. He told a city council housing management board meeting: “The headline for this policy has been bumping 9,000 people off the council housing waiting list.
