Work on one of Bristol’s most prominent development sites has finally restarted – more than two years after it stalled when the firm building it went bust.
But the owners of the Boatyard building on the Bath Road in Totterdown said that there is so much work to do to finish it, it won’t be completed until the winter of 2026 – another two years in the future.
That means the first residents won’t be moving in to the 17 storey tower block until almost six years after it was presented by the then Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees to now Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as a flagship development of his administration, and almost eight years after it was first given planning permission.
A large crane is back on the site on the main A4 road in to Bristol, and the housing association that now owns the development site said they have appointed new contractors who are on site and working on finishing the development of 152 flats.
A spokesperson for Clarion, the London-based housing association arm of property developers Latimer, said ‘final designs’ are in progress to work out how to complete the troubled project.
Bristol Live asked Clarion what work needed to be done to finish the project. A spokesperson for the housing association said: “We are pleased that our newly appointed main works contractors is advancing the enabling works at the Boatyard Project on Bath Road.
“Final designs are in progress, and we anticipate the development’s completion by Winter 2026,” he added.
The troubled Boatyard
The Boatyard was one of the most controversial developments of the first years of the 2016 Labour administration in Bristol, with developers taking advantage of Marvin Rees’ decision to scrap rules restricting the number of very tall buildings in Bristol.
A large number of objections from local residents in Brislington and Totterdown when it was first proposed, and it was branded ‘a monstrosity’ when the developers applied for planning permission in the first half of 2019.
Councillors controversially gave the plan permission in June 2019, and along with the decision to give permission to Castle Park View, the Boatyard kickstarted developers to propose more tall tower blocks of apartments at sites in the city centre and South Bristol.
The project was initially created by a different development firm, Hadley Property Group, but in 2020 the Mid Group took over and switched the development to one that was designated as 100 per cent affordable homes. Of the total 152 flats, 112 will be sold as shared ownership with Clarion Housing Association, and the other 40 let for ‘affordable rent’ to people on the council’s HomeChoice housing waiting list system.
The switch to 100 per cent affordable meant the new developers didn’t have to pay around £1.2 million in Community Infrastructure Levy to the city council for local improvements.
In the run up to the May 2021 local elections, Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees took then Opposition Leader Sir Keir Starmer up to the top of the tower block to show how his administration was ‘getting stuff done’ in encouraging the building of thousands of new homes in the city.
But in the summer of 2022, with the tower block structure complete, the Mid Group went into administration nationally, leaving the development mothballed for the past two and a half years.
In February 2023, the development made national headlines after Bristol Live revealed there had been significant erosion of the river bank on which the tower blocks were built, but both the city council and Clarion Housing reassured local residents that the building’s foundations were deep and would not be affected by the landslip on the river bank.
But Clarion struggled for two years to find a construction firm to take on the job of finishing the development, with speculation that the building’s innovative ‘modular design’ – something championed by the Mayor’s administration and its five-year ‘Bristol Housing Festival’ organisation – was the root of the issue.
Clarion has never confirmed to Bristol Live exactly what the issues are with finishing the building, why it has taken so long to find a contractor willing to finish it, and exactly what work now needs to be done. When work stalled because of the collapse of the Mid Group in the summer of 2022, the flats were being marketed for shared ownership sale and prospective residents told they would be ready by the end of the autumn that year – so within a few months.
Now, despite the buildings being externally complete, the organisation said it will take at least two years – until the winter of 2026 – for the flats to be ready for their first residents.