The company that is Bristol’s biggest provider of emergency accommodation wants the Government to decide on its plan to turn a former ten-bed nursing home in South Bristol into a house in multiple occupation (HMO) for up to 20 people. Connolly & Callaghan, which runs most of Bristol City Council’s emergency accommodation, has appealed for a planning inquiry instead of waiting for a council decision.
It claims the council’s own planning department has failed to even allocate them a planning officer, six months after it submitted its controversial plan for a new HMO in South Bristol. The application to change the large Victorian house in Acraman’s Road, just off Dean Lane in Bedminster, was heavily criticised by local councillors in May this year, and council planners persuaded Connolly & Callaghan (C&C) to scale back its plan.
The original plan was to turn number 8 Acraman’s Road from a ten-person nursing home, which closed last year, into an HMO for up to 27 people, which was described by local councillor Christine Townsend as something that would 'degrade human dignity'. Those original plans would have seen 27 people sharing just five toilets, one shower room and two baths, and so little communal living space that each person would have to stand in an area only 62 cm2 if all residents decided to go to the living room at the same time, Cllr Townsend said.
