Developers have said Bristol should build 60,000 homes over the next few years and remove a cap on new student flats. The figure for how many new homes are needed until the year 2040 was disputed during the second day of a marathon inquiry into how Bristol should develop.
Using an old method of assessing how many homes cities need, Bristol should aim to build 3,380 homes a year. However the government recently changed its suggested method, putting much less pressure on cities, which results in a smaller target of 1,925 homes a year instead.
Planning chiefs at Bristol City Council are being grilled on their Local Plan by a government planning inspector and property developers. The public examination of the wide-ranging document will last for seven weeks, looking at all sorts of issues regarding new housing.
Michael Wilberforce, a council planning policy officer, admitted figures in the Local Plan were uncertain. The second day began with him and the government inspector counting years on their fingers, as one year appeared to have “gone missing” from an important graph.
The Local Plan includes a forecasted 34,650 homes built in Bristol until 2040. Developers said the target should instead be 60,000, although none in the room raised their hand when asked if this would actually be achievable. Higher figures would likely mean taller apartment buildings or more houses built on countryside areas on the city’s outskirts; both would likely be unpopular.
Colin Chapman, the council’s deputy head of planning, said: “The government has said the old methodology wasn’t correct. It’s one method removed and a new method brought in.”
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The problem is a lack of space in Bristol to build new homes, coupled with frequent opposition from existing communities objecting to plans for new homes. But if fewer new homes are built, rents and house prices will likely continue soaring. As well as forecasting the need for housing, the Local Plan explores the capacity for the city to actually fit in thousands of new homes.
An example of the uncertainty surrounding some of the figures is the Lawrence Hill regeneration project. A massive roundabout takes up a huge amount of space at the bottom of Lawrence Hill, and there are early stage plans to redesign the junction and build flats on much of that space. But Mr Wilberforce said these were just “aspirational”, with no current commitment on funding.
Other housing figures come from unexpected developments, often from small scale developers building a few homes here and there. These are difficult to predict exactly, but still make up a crucial part of the forecasted figures.
Matthew Good, representing the construction firm Watkin Jones, said: “Having gone through this morning’s session has been quite illuminating on how these figures have been identified. 60 per cent of the requirement has some uncertainty attached to it.”
Another row centred on how many student flats should be built, given the rapid rate the city’s universities are expanding. Many students choose to live in shared houses, known as houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), which are often converted from family homes and play a key role in rising rents — as landlords can extract more money from several occupants than one couple.
Developers said that the council should allow more student flats to be built, and criticised a cap currently included in the Local Plan on purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA). These could reduce pressure on the rest of the housing market, but are also often unpopular among local communities living nearby.
Mr Good said: “Why would we want to apply a cap to that type of accommodation? The council has had issues with how that interacts with local communities, but for the potential source of supply, we’re saying no more than x.”
Michael Orr, representing the University of Bristol, added: “Where PBSA isn’t met, it’s causing acute problems. On HMOs, Students are outbidding housing benefit tenants, some of the most vulnerable members of society.”
However, both the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England have chosen to massively increase how many students they enrol over the past few years. If they chose to cap enrolment numbers, far fewer students would move to the city, reducing the impact.
Over the past seven years, the number of students shot up by 42 per cent, or 10,000 students each. One prominent Green councillor previously claimed Bristol’s universities “are the housing crisis”, given the role in how increasing the number of students affects the price of rents.