There is “no silver bullet” for rehousing Barton House tenants suffering trauma from the sudden evacuation in November 2023 according to the leader of Bristol City Council. At the end of this month tenants should finally be updated on how the council plans to help them in the longer term.
Before local elections last May, the Greens promised to give residents of Barton House “band one priority”, in the system used to assign new social housing. HomeChoice puts people hoping for a new home into four bands, with people given less priority often made to wait several years.
The Greens largely took control of Bristol City Council in May, including chairing the housing policy committee which is responsible for the HomeChoice system. In an interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service, two leading Greens spoke about their plans to rebuild trust with council tenants across the city, with a new focus on making sure homes are safe.
Councillor Barry Parsons, chair of the housing policy committee, said: “We’re going to come back to residents by the end of March with a set of responses. We’re going to give an account of where we go from here, what we’re able to do around all of the issues that have been raised, including rehousing.
“The experiences at Barton House were really upsetting for a lot of people. But we need to make sure we’re supporting people in a way that is fair to everyone in the city who lives in our social housing. We’re honouring that pledge, and people will see later this month that we are.”
Medical experts recently said the evacuation was a “mass-traumatising event”, with many residents suffering trauma. Doctors and psychologists from the Medact charity urged the council to prioritise Barton House tenants for rehousing as soon as possible. However there is a dire shortage of social housing in Bristol, with over 20,000 households waiting for a new home.
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Cllr Tony Dyer, leader of the council, said: “Over the last eight years or so, the number of people on the housing waiting list has more than doubled. Simply being in band one doesn’t automatically mean that you’re going to get a home very soon. I know of households that have been on band one for well over a year.
“We need to go back to the residents of Barton House with some answers and proposals and work with them to find a way of making them as happy as we can. But there is no silver bullet because we simply don’t have the range of housing available at the moment. We have to get the balance right.”
Adding to problems is the damning verdict of the Regulator of Social Housing last summer, that the council needed to massively improve safety checks and repairs on its homes. This included shocking findings that thousands of council homes suffered with damp and mould.
Cllr Dyer added: “With the new regulations that have been brought in, there’s a change of focus to ensuring that all of our council homes are up to the right standard and that they’re safe to live in. At the same time we’re working on how we can provide additional homes, which includes council housing but also additional types of housing as well.
“That’s so we can get the widest possible range and quantum of houses delivered. That then gives us a much better chance of being able to give both the residents of Barton House and all those households on band one or two a much better chance of getting a house that works for them.”
A new focus has been put on safety checks, repairs and engaging with residents. But the Greens took on a huge backlog of work in the many thousands of homes the council owns. Even the depot in Brislington, responsible for organising damp and mould repairs, itself suffers with terrible damp and mould.
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Cllr Parsons said: “For the first time in many years, decades, we’re investing in homes that our council tenants live in, making sure those homes are safe, making sure that people are able to live in homes that are healthy, and that they live in a community and neighbourhood where they have a meaningful say in what happens in their home and neighbourhood.”
The Greens say the reason for the backlog is 14 years of austerity, but also mistakes made locally, as some problems were “put on the back burner”. In two weeks, Cllr Dyer will head to parliament to tell MPs on the housing select committee how local government should be funded.
As well as Barton House, several tower blocks owned by the council are affected by fire safety issues. A programme to install sprinklers has taken ages to work through, and hundreds of tenants are waiting to find out when sprinklers will be installed in their homes.
The council is also appointing a new director for building safety, to give the issue greater priority and oversight. But a harder challenge to achieve is rebuilding trust among council tenants. “That isn’t something that happens in 10 months,” Cllr Dyer said, “and probably won’t happen in 24 months. The only way we can demonstrate that is by proving that we’re willing to listen”.
How quickly Bristol can build new affordable and council homes depends on the scale of the funding put on the table by the government. Previous announcements on extra cash for housing have proved less than hoped for.
Cllr Parsons added: “The big announcement we’re waiting for is on the affordable homes programme. We’re expecting the next settlement for that to be coming later this year. We’ve heard indications that the government has ambition to increase housing delivery nationally. We haven’t heard from them what proportion of those homes are affordable or social rent.”