The task of building 1,400 homes at Hengrove Park, including at least 670 new council houses, is to be given to the council’s own housing company Goram Homes.
Bristol City Council chiefs said the move will mean hundreds of new council-owned houses will be built more quickly too - over a five-year period, instead of the original 10 years.
Earlier this month, Bristol Live revealed that the massive Hengrove Park project had stalled because council chiefs had stopped the process to attract a housebuilder willing to get involved in the original scheme, which was given outline planning permission in early 2020.
READ MORE: Bristol council chief admits he has 'very little power' to make developers build affordable homes
So instead, the council announced today (Monday, January 31) it is to hand over all the land - the site of the old Whitchurch Airport - to Goram Homes, the council-owned housing development company.
And the percentage of ‘affordable homes’ will increase, from 30 per cent to 50 per cent, with housing chief Tom Renhard hailing it as something that will "supercharge the council’s delivery of affordable housing across Bristol".
And instead of taking 10 years to get built, Cllr Renhard said he was hopeful Goram Homes could get building more quickly - and most of the development could be done within five years, with ‘innovative’ new building methods, including modern version of pre-fab homes built to environmentally high standards, being involved too. Council chiefs decicded to stop the procurement process after inviting bids from developers to get involved in building the homes. Some had already made their submissions, but council chiefs chose not to progress any of them to a second stage.
The announcement has outraged local councillors for Hengrove and Whitchurch - who are Liberal Democrats and not from the ruling Labour group - who accused the council of keeping them in the dark.
The original plans for homes, roads, shops and services will remain as before - but Goram Homes will now be the ones who submit detailed planning applications for the various parts of Hengrove Park.
The first of the 1,400 new homes at Hengrove Park could be going up within a matter of months - the areas of land either side of the road into the leisure centre and hospital are going through the planning process now, and that would see around 27 shared ownership homes being built.
The rest of the 1,400 homes will be split between ones up for sale and the ‘social rent’ element - some 670 of them.
Of the three main ‘affordable housing’ categories - shared ownership, affordable rent or social rent - the latter is the most ‘affordable’, with rents capped to match housing benefits.
Adding 1,400 new homes to their ‘pipeline’ will represent a doubling of the new houses Goram Homes has on its ‘to-do’ list.
A spokesperson for Goram Homes said that although it is a new company - set up around four years ago by Bristol City Council to build homes on council land - the people involved were experienced in big projects.
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“Hengrove Park is a fantastic opportunity for Goram Homes to build a highly sustainable, inclusive development which includes affordable homes in the numbers that our city needs,” said Goram’s managing director Stephen Baker.
“If our Business Plan and development pipeline is approved by Cabinet, we’ll work with council officers and the community to get started as soon as possible,” he added.
Cllr Tom Renhard, the cabinet lead for housing at City Hall, said there were 16,000 people on the housing waiting list, and while Hengrove Park wouldn’t solve the housing crisis in Bristol itself, it would be a big help for the families and people in the most need.
“Adding Hengrove Park to the Goram Homes pipeline is a clear signal of our intent to supercharge the delivery of affordable housing across Bristol. We’re committed to delivering 1,000 new affordable homes each year by 2024 to help meet the need for high-quality, sustainable new homes in the city,” he said.
“By working closely with Goram Homes, we can make sure that council land is best used to create value for Bristol’s citizens, helps to tackle the climate and ecological emergencies, and addresses inequalities in access to affordable housing,” he added.
The Hengrove Park plan also means a new rugby club will be created for St Bernadette’s. The park plan is next door to Hengrove Leisure Park, where a private developer has won permission for 350 new homes to be built on the car park and the site of the cinema and bingo hall.
The plans for Hengrove Park itself were drawn up over many years of debate and controversy, culminating in a neighbourhood planning process that set a series of parameters for the size and scale of the development.
Local councillor Tim Kent was part of that, but he accused the ruling Labour group of keeping local councillors and local people in the dark over the changing processes at Hengrove Park.
"It is clear that local ward councillors have been intentionally kept in the dark on this issue by Bristol City Council," he said. "A reasonable request for information has been intentionally frustrated so that a media release can take priority.
"This is the way councillors and their residents are treated. A secretive organisation, acting outside the law and norms of decency with total disdain for ward councillors and their residents. This is not the way it should be," he added.
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