Council buildings ‘firesale’ delayed amid mystery ‘serious concerns’

Plans to sell off at least six Bristol City Council-owned buildings in a “firesale” have been delayed amid mysterious “serious concerns” aired behind closed doors. The properties include an eyesore covered in scaffolding in Bedminster’s main street that has shut the bus lane and forced pedestrians onto the street for six years.

An innovative project launched in 2018, called East Street Mews, had aimed to turn the site on Bedminster Parade into 11 flats for local homeless people, but this collapsed and all work has since stalled. The building, formerly Sexton’s car audio store in the 2000s and then the Freak Street Studios which shut in 2015, is boarded up and hoarding is blocking the pavement.

As reported in January, the property was found to be in a much worse condition than thought and was likely to have to be demolished instead of refurbished, so the council hired a land agent to find potential development partners. But councillors on the strategy and resources policy committee have now deferred selling off the building, along with at least five others – including a number that have not been identified because of commercial sensitivities – following a 28-minute discussion in private.

Immediately before the session which excluded the press and public, Labour group leader Cllr Tom Renhard proposed delaying a decision ahead of an impending review of the council’s buildings disposals policy by a taskforce, due to report back in January. This was voted down by 6-3 votes, but when the meeting on Monday, November 18, reconvened in public, his suggestion was suddenly approved unanimously.

The exempt discussion followed a request by Cllr John Goulandris (Conservative, Stoke Bishop) who said he had no issues with the five council-owned buildings listed in public papers but that he had a “serious concern” with those not listed in the public domain. Bristol City Council adult services has asked for three of the other four named sites to be sold on the open market to a registered provider to develop them for supported housing.

These are Summerhill Centre in Summerhill Road, East Bristol Intermediate Care at Summerhill Terrace, both in St George, and Jubilee Hall, Wedmore Vale, Knowle. There were no internal local authority requests to repurpose Delaware House in West Town Lane, Stockwood, which was also proposed to be sold off, as is the case with the Bedminster Parade building.

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None of them were deemed suitable for council housing. Those five properties, all currently vacant, would earn the council at least £2.1million in total, plus £120,000 savings in utilities and business rates, although it would lose £75,000 in rent.

A report to the committee said: “Given the scale of the capital receipts it is clearly in the financial interests of the council to dispose of these assets.” Last February, full council approved the annual budget including a target of £21.6million selling off some of its buildings in 2024/25.

But the committee last Monday was told that the authority was set to fall short of that by £6million. Cllr Renhard said: “We have set up a task-and-finish group that’s about to start meeting and this seems premature to be bringing further assets for disposal when we’re about to review our process around the disposal of assets.

“If we don’t need to proceed with this now, why are we proceeding with this now when we’re due to review our process anyway?” Finance director Tony Kirkham replied: “It’s in line with your current set of policies, so we’re following through on those policies.

“The council will need these capital receipts either in the current financial year or next year in order to meet its costs. They meet the policy and we are taking them through the process as per normal.”

Cllr Renhard said: “This could have come to the committee in January for consideration once the work of the group has concluded. We are about to review a process.

“As a [Labour] group we feel quite strongly that we should not be preempting that with further disposals of public assets. The point is that it’s not delaying it for years, it’s about a two-month pause while we do our work as a task-and-finish group.

“Proceeding with this today undermines the whole purpose of that property task-and-finish group, gets rid of any goodwill and carries on a firesale of council assets, and I’ve not been convinced there is a financial need that it can’t wait two months while the group does its work.”