Bristol City Council asks for help on housing
There's not enough space in Bristol to meet growing demand for homes, the City Council says
Bristol City Council is asking its neighbours for help to build new housing and meet rapidly growing demand.
After two attempts at regional housing plans failed, questions remain about how many new homes will be built in countryside areas surrounding Bristol.
The council has now set out how many new homes should be built in Bristol and where until 2040, but as the city’s population shoots up and developers run out of suitable sites to build new housing, council planners are hoping nearby areas can help provide enough homes.
Bristol's Local Plan is a wide-ranging document which will shape the city’s future housing, as well as set rules for property developers on how new buildings should be constructed.
A draft was recently published ahead of an important milestone vote in City Hall next week.
The draft new Local Plan states: “It’s not possible to deliver the entirety of assessed need inside Bristol’s boundaries.
"Making the best use of brownfield land does not mean that all such land is available for housing development.
"Land is also required to maintain and grow the city’s workspace — offices, industry and warehouses — and other land uses.
“Greenfield sites are rare in Bristol, and most are required to be retained as Green Belt land, for recreation and to sustain and enhance biodiversity and food growing.
"The evidence indicates additional homes will need to be delivered elsewhere to ensure that the city’s need for new homes does not go unmet.”
Over the past few years, planners have made two attempts at drawing up a regional housing plan — the Joint Spatial Plan and the Spatial Development Strategy — aiming to spread new homes fairly across the wider Bristol and Bath area.
However, they were both ultimately dropped, adding extra pressure on Bristol to provide enough new homes within the city’s limits.
Government planning inspectors rejected the Joint Spatial Plan in 2019, a regional plan for housing covering Bristol, South Gloucestershire, North Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset.
The Joint Spatial Plan was prepared by the four councils in the area, and identified 12 locations for 105,000 new homes to be built over about two decades.
This included 2,500 homes in Whitchurch on countryside land currently protected as the Green Belt.
These plans would have seen a new link road from the A37 from south of Whitchurch to the A4 Hicks Gate roundabout.
Sites in North Somerset also proved unpopular among locals due to potential damage to the open countryside.
But inspectors said there were serious problems with the evidence put forward by the councils about why the 12 key locations were chosen.
The four councils later gave up working on the Joint Spatial Plan, and planners went back to the drawing board.
At the time, the Planning Inspectorate said: “Robust evidence has not been provided to demonstrate that the 12 strategic development locations have been selected against reasonable alternatives, on a robust, consistent and objective basis.
"Given these are an integral part of the plan’s spatial strategy, we cannot conclude the spatial strategy is sound.”
The task of planning where new housing should be built across the region then fell to the West of England Combined Authority.
The combined authority covers Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath and North East Somerset — but not North Somerset.
The new regional government body was supposed to help local areas work together better.
But two years later, the combined authority’s attempt at a regional housing plan also failed.
The Spatial Development Strategy aimed to find enough locations to build all the new homes the region needs, spreading the extra housing across the region, including a whopping 37,000 in South Gloucestershire.
Talks on the Spatial Development Strategy broke down last year, sparking a major row between Dan Norris, the Labour West of England metro mayor, and Toby Savage, the then Conservative leader of South Gloucestershire Council.
The two could not agree on how many new homes should be built in South Gloucestershire, and work on the plan stopped.
One key reason why regional planning is needed is that Bristol has a much larger population than surrounding areas but much less space, making it harder to build enough housing to match demand.
In that context, City Hall bosses are now asking Bristol’s neighbours to help out.
A recent council report said: “In the absence of a strategic level plan, preparation of the Local Plan has reverted to the duty to cooperate to address cross-boundary strategic matters.
"Bristol City Council has liaised with the surrounding authorities to consider and address cross-boundary matters.
“The assessed housing need for the city is not able to be met in full, and so neighbouring authorities are being asked if they would be in position to accommodate any of the local housing needs which would otherwise go unmet.
"The councils will continue to actively consider this request.”
Bristol councillors will vote on October 31 on approving the draft new Local Plan, ahead of an upcoming public consultation.
Then government inspectors will review the Local Plan — checking all the evidence is sound — before the council finally signs it off in spring 2025.
According to the Local Plan, Bristol needs 1,925 new homes built each year, or 34,650 by 2040.
These homes will be focused on ‘brownfield’ sites which have previously been built on, but some will be built on countryside Green Belt areas like in Brislington, Bishopsworth and Ashton Vale.
If the draft is approved by councillors next week, the council will consult the public on the plans for at least six weeks from November.
The council will then submit the Local Plan to government inspectors in spring next year, for checks that will likely last at least 12 months.