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.
Read next: Plan to cram 27 people into one home 'degrades human dignity'
The outcry at the plans from local residents, neighbours and councillors prompted city planners to tell C&C to go back to the drawing board. They did - the first application was withdrawn within weeks back in May, and then in June C&C came back with a second application. This reduced the bed numbers to 20 in the 14 rooms in the large house, and added an on-site office so that those working there supervising and supporting the residents have somewhere to go.
C&C submitted this second planning application on June 27, but they seem no closer to a decision from the City Hall planning department. So C&C, which bought the building when it went up for sale for £1.3 million back in December 2021, has given up waiting and appealed to the Government planning inspectorate to decide instead, on the basis that the council has not determined the application in time.
In its ‘statement of case’, C&C said: “The proposed emergency accommodation is of a good standard and addresses a recognised and desperate need within the city. The application was submitted on June 27. At the time of writing, the case has not been allocated to a case officer, and no consultation has taken place. The appellant is aware of applications submitted to Bristol City Council more than five months ago, which have yet to be allocated to a case officer.
“Whilst the appellant appreciates the issues with regards to staffing and workload levels, a commercial decision has to be made in the interests of expediency of decision-making. Given that the eight-week time limit for determining the application has expired, the appellant considers a non-determination appeal to be the most expedient route towards consent for a policy-compliant scheme,” they added.
Bristol Live has asked Bristol City Council about C&C’s comments on the planning department at City Hall.
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