Written evidence submitted by Bristol City Council [HCE 080]

 

 

Contents

 

Bristol’s Housing Context

Executive Summary:

Financial context of the council

Housing Market Overview

Social homes

Private Rented Sector

Homelessness and Temporary Accommodation

New supply

Brownfield regeneration

Supported housing


Bristol’s Housing Context

Executive Summary:

Bristol City Council is navigating a period of acute financial and housing pressure, shaped by years of funding cuts, rising inflation, and surging demand for essential services such as adult social care, SEND, and homelessness support. Despite these challenges, the council is working collaboratively with a wide range of partners - including registered providers, developers, community organisations, and regional and national agencies - to improve services, find innovative solutions, and launch ambitious transformation programmes. For example, the Tackling Homelessness Programme has already delivered significant savings and supported hundreds of families into secure homes, while the Housing IT Transformation Programme is modernising services for residents.

The city’s housing market is marked by rapidly rising house prices and private rents, which have far outpaced wage growth and made Bristol one of the least affordable cities in the UK outside London. Over 21,000 households are on the waiting list for housing, overcrowding is increasing, and homelessness has surged, with a 90% rise in demand for temporary accommodation over the past four years. Yet, Bristol continues to lead in partnership working and creative solutions: between 2021/22 and 2023/24, 1,390 affordable homes were delivered, nearly half on council-owned land, and the council’s “Homes for Bristol: Interim Affordable Housing Delivery Plan 2025–27” sets out a clear pathway to deliver 12,000 affordable homes by 2040, with a comprehensive new Housing Strategy in development.

As the city’s largest social landlord, the council is investing in fire safety, decency standards, and decarbonisation, and is on track to complete stock condition surveys for 70% of homes by March 2026 which will form the basis of a new HRA Asset Management Strategy. However, much of the stock is ageing and under-resourced, while new regulatory requirements add further financial strain, and historic underinvestment and rent caps have left the Housing Revenue Account stretched and limited the council’s ability to maintain and improve homes.

In the private rented sector, which now houses almost a third of Bristol’s population, affordability and security remain major challenges for tenants. Bristol has pioneered licensing schemes, shaped policy through the Living Rent Commission, and worked proactively to bring empty homes back into use, including through partnerships like the We Care Home Improvement Agency. However, enforcement remains resource-intensive, and the end of private tenancies is now the leading cause of homelessness presentations.

Homelessness and the use of temporary accommodation have increased sharply since the pandemic, resulting in high costs and significant subsidy losses for the council due to reliance on expensive private sector accommodation. In response, Bristol has launched a Tackling Homelessness Programme, which has already delivered tangible results: 64 homes have been purchased for use as temporary accommodation, demountable homes have been developed, and hundreds of families have been supported into private rented sector tenancies. Alongside this, the council is working to increase the supply of both temporary and supported accommodation, improve the Housing Options Service, and accelerate the delivery of new affordable homes.

However, the ambition to expand housing supply is constrained by a series of viability challenges. High land values and rapidly rising construction costs make it difficult to bring forward new developments, while limited borrowing capacity restricts the council’s ability to invest at scale. The ongoing impact of Right to Buy also means that sales of council homes continue to outpace their replacement, further reducing the stock of social housing available to those in need.

Despite these obstacles, Bristol’s commitment to regeneration remains strong. Major projects such as Temple Quarter, Frome Gateway, and Western Harbour are set to deliver thousands of new homes and jobs, underpinning the city’s growth and economic vitality. Many of these regeneration schemes focus on brownfield sites, which, while offering sustainable development opportunities, often present significant viability hurdles - complex site conditions, remediation needs, infrastructure requirements, and funding gaps all add to the barriers to delivery.

To address these challenges, the council is working closely with the West of England Combined Authority to identify and unlock stalled brownfield sites, and has a strong pipeline of deliverable schemes ready to progress. With targeted government support Bristol and the region could accelerate the delivery of thousands of much-needed homes, demonstrating the impact of effective local and national partnership.

The council’s housing company, Goram Homes, is unlocking council-owned land and delivering high-quality, sustainable, mixed-tenure communities. A prime example is the One Lockleaze development, where 55% of the 268 new homes are affordable - well above the city’s target - and the scheme is designed to RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge standards. These efforts demonstrate Bristol’s proactive and innovative approach, but also highlight the need for continued partnership and support to overcome the structural barriers to housing delivery.

There is also growing demand for supported housing, particularly for people with complex needs. The council is working with Homes England and NHS England to unlock funding and test new delivery models. Bristol is a national leader in Specialised Supported Housing (SSH), with 70 units currently underway and award-winning partnerships, such as with Elim Housing Association, delivering bespoke lifelong homes for residents with complex needs.

Looking ahead, Bristol is developing a comprehensive Housing Strategy and renewing its asset management approach, underpinned by high-quality data and a commitment to proactive, place-based investment. Partnership working, innovation, and advocacy remain central to Bristol’s strategy as it seeks to deliver a sustainable, equitable city where everyone can thrive, despite the considerable challenges ahead.

Financial context of the council

Bristol City Council faces severe financial pressures after years of cuts to public services. Rising inflation, the pandemic’s legacy, and the cost-of-living crisis have driven up demand for adult social care, SEND, and homelessness support, while local government budgets have faced real-terms cuts for 14 years. The LGA estimates a £6.2bn funding gap for English councils over the next two years.

Despite efforts to reduce costs and manage demand, Bristol’s financial position remains precarious. Over the next five years, funding is forecast to rise by £58.5m, but essential services require an additional £136.2m—leaving a £77.7m gap. This limits the Council’s ability to deliver for residents.

The next decade will bring major change: city centre regeneration, Net Zero transition, and service transformation. Following the 2024 elections, we will navigate shifting political priorities, with renewed focus on devolution and regional growth. Our emerging Corporate Strategy 2025–2030 sets out a vision for a sustainable, equitable Bristol where everyone can thrive, built around five priorities:

Global uncertainty, inflation, and rising demand—combined with constrained funding—create especially challenging circumstances. Factors like NRPF immigration conditions and deprivation further increase service pressures without additional resources.

In 2024/25, £38.9m of savings were delivered; £43m more are needed in 2025/26. Five transformation programmes now target high-demand, high-cost services (over 70% of General Fund spend) to improve efficiency, manage demand, and redesign systems.

While we welcome the Fair funding review, it does not solve the financial challenge we face. Bristol remains underfunded: core spending power per head is £1,152, below the UK average (£1,173) and core cities average (£1,232). Matching these would mean an extra £10m–£39m annually.

Housing Market Overview

We have a vision for Bristol, and that is that everyone has access to a safe, warm, secure home, at a price they can afford and belong to a community in which they can thrive. However, the reality of the housing market in Bristol means that more often than not, housing is a cause of stress and anxiety, not safety and shelter.


Key Bristol Housing stats:

 

Social homes

In Bristol, 18.7% of the population live in social housing. Bristol City Council is the largest social landlord in the city. We own and manage 26,700 tenanted homes across Bristol.  This represents 14% of the city's total housing stock and makes us the sixth largest local authority landlord in England. A proportion of this stock is ageing at pace and as a result requires increasing levels of maintenance and repairs – which comes at a significant financial cost to the council.

Rent reductions and caps have severely impacted our 30-year HRA business plan, while new requirements—such as fire safety, decency standards, and environmental regulations—add further financial pressure. Decades of under-resourcing, policy instability, and economic volatility, combined with demands for investment in fire safety and decarbonisation, mean council housing is under unprecedented strain. Recent legislation, including Awaab’s Law, the Fire Safety Act 2022, and the Social Housing Regulation Act 2023, has introduced additional unfunded obligations, with HRAs excluded from the New Burdens Doctrine, leaving councils to absorb costs alone. Upcoming measures like the revised Decent Homes Standard and Warm Homes Plan, though vital for improving homes and energy efficiency, will intensify these challenges without coordinated, long-term investment.

Bristol City Council is not alone in facing these challenges. We have worked with 108 other Local Authority Landlords to develop a joint report which outlined how, with government support, local authorities can stabilise funding, bring homes up to modern, sustainable standards, and deliver the next generation of council homes. The final Future of Council Housing report was launched in September.

Previous changes to rent and borrowing policies have made it challenging for us to plan – subsequently putting our HRA on a difficult footing. Core management and maintenance costs for the HRA outpace increases in income, even under CPI+1%. In 2022, CPI increased by 9.6%, but HRAs nationally experienced 16% inflation in repairs and maintenance costs. In 2023/24, Housemark (housing benchmarking company) found that social landlords spent 11% more on maintaining properties to ensure they meet regulatory standards compared to the previous year.

The proposed levels of investment in existing stock will also be impacted by decisions regarding rent increases for council tenants. We welcome the government’s commitment to a ten-year rent settlement; however, it does not make up for the funding we lost over the decade of rent cap. We calculated that over the rent reduction and rent cap period, Bristol’s Housing Revenue Account lost around £850m over the 30-year business plan, the new rent settlement will add about £440m over the 30-year business plan. The Future of Council Housing Coalition had an additional ask of government, which was to provide HRAs with an urgent £644 million one-off rescue fund. Further we would urge the government to quickly confirm rent convergence will take place from 26/27.

In April 2024, we took the decision to refer ourselves to the Regulator of Social Housing for a potential breach of its consumer standards. Since our self-referral, we have been working proactively with the RSH to develop a detailed improvement plan to address regulatory compliance failings. In this context the council is prioritising for the short to medium term significant improvement in the quality of existing housing stock via the Housing and Consumer Standards Programme. To this extent and within the significant financial challenges facing the HRA our latest budget delivers the following improvements in 2025/26:

Alongside this, we established a £64m programme to remove unsafe cladding from all affected council owned structures by 2032. However, considering the governments new target date of 2029 the council is working to accelerate this delivery programme. Unfortunately, our ability to deliver remediation works at pace is often hampered by limited funding and the rising cost of materials for building safety works. The continued use of the Housing Revenue Account to fund remediation works is continuing to effectively transfer the cost to our tenants and impacting our ability to deliver other important social housing programmes.

Overall, new requirements and underinvestment in recent years has meant that substantial investment is now needed to bring homes up to standard, alongside the need to decarbonise and remediate.

Private Rented Sector

Over the past decade, the cost of renting privately in Bristol has risen by 52%, while wages have increased by just 24%. This widening gap has made housing increasingly unaffordable, forcing many residents further away from their workplaces, families, essential services and sometimes into homelessness. The impact is significant: around 134,000 people—almost one-third of Bristol’s population—rent privately. Bristol is now the most expensive city to rent in the UK outside London.

The average monthly rent in Bristol reached £1,825 in 2025. House prices have increased by almost 90% in the past decade, meaning residents now need nearly 10 times their annual salary to buy a home. Population growth of 10% between 2011 and 2021—with projections of 532,700 by 2043—continues to put pressure on housing supply.

The private rented sector (PRS) faces serious challenges around affordability, access, and security of tenure. These pressures contribute to declining wellbeing, increased homelessness, and growing inequality. The main reason for homelessness presentations is the end of private tenancies (27.3%), and there are an estimated 800+ people living in vehicles due to lack of affordable options.

The Council has been using existing powers to try and improve the Private Rented Sector. The Council has introduced licensing schemes to improve standards and worked to bring empty homes back into use, ensuring compliance with management and safety requirements.

Bristol has a significant student population, with 43,700 full-time students aged 18 and over, representing 9.2% of the city’s population, concentrated in centrally. To meet demand, over 3,500 student units have been built since 2006, and in central wards, student accommodation now accounts for more than 60% of housing. This shift has led to properties previously available for general private rent being converted to student lets, reflected in the rise of HMOs from 12,559 in 2017 to 13,349 in 2023. The growth of student housing is reducing the availability of private rented homes for non-student residents.

To address these challenges and promote balanced communities, Bristol City Council introduced two licensing schemes:

We welcome enhanced protections from the Renter Rights Act (RRA). Under the RRA, every local housing authority will have a number of new duties placed upon them. One of these duties is a new statutory duty to ‘enforce the landlord legislation in its area’. This will have several implications:

In 2022, the council set up the Bristol Living Rent Commission (2022–23) to look at the challenges within the private rented sector and explore the role of devolution. Commissioners included sector experts, tenants, landlords, and academics. The Commission produced a final report with 23 recommendations, one of which recognised the strong support that exists for rent control policies to address the affordability crisis.

Homelessness and Temporary Accommodation

Since the pandemic we have seen a 25% increase in households (average of 510 households a month) approaching Bristol City Council because of homelessness related issues. The number of households owed statutory homelessness duties and currently in TA is 92% higher than before the pandemic, with over 1,500 households currently in TA. This has put a strain on the council’s resources.

The council has a legal obligation to house people who are legally homeless and vulnerable, and these people are placed into TA while more suitable long-term options are secured. Due to a lack of affordable housing, much of that accommodation is secured via expensive spot purchased accommodation from the private rental sector. The council claims some of the cost back via Housing Benefit, but this is capped by central government, linked to Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates set in 2011, so the amount that the council pays above the benefit cap results in a loss to the council, known as subsidy loss.  The annual TA subsidy loss for Bristol Council is estimated to total over £12m (2023-24), with forecasts showing that demand will continue to increase. 

To respond we have launched a major transformation programme to provide additional supply of temporary accommodation at cheaper rates; and more exempt supported accommodation which incurs no subsidy loss. Work so far has identified a cashable savings target of £2.123m in 23/24. As well as increasing value for money in the provision of temporary accommodation, the programme includes a workstream on improvements to the Housing Options Service that will enable the council to better manage demand.

New supply

The housing crisis is affecting Bristol residents and the council’s ability to deliver financially sustainable services. We have published Homes for Bristol, an Interim Housing Delivery Plan which re-enforces our commitment to partnership working and utilising all tools available to us to unlock and accelerate delivery of housing and drive economic growth across Bristol. Infrastructure funding is needed to deliver the transport connectivity, integrated flood solutions and social infrastructure required to support the planned growth and act as catalyst for major productivity and efficiency gains in the existing ecosystem.

Between 2021/22 and 2023/24, 1,390 affordable homes were delivered in Bristol. These were delivered:

This includes 166 delivered by Bristol City Council. 47% of affordable housing delivered in Bristol between 2021/22 and 2023/24 has been on Bristol City Council land.

We are also part of the Small Sites Aggregator programme, which is a new approach aimed towards making small council owned sites more viable for developing social rent homes. This approach helps tackle the ongoing housing crisis and temporary accommodation challenges with a priority to move households with children out of long-term managed homelessness.

In 2018, Bristol City Council set up Goram Homes to build quality homes where they are needed the most.  Goram has several projects underway, working with partners, and is delivering 591 new homes in the city. By having a stake in the development company, we can build homes that create communities and are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. Furthermore, we can ensure that a range of housing products are delivered which meet a range of needs. Moreover, by developing market housing for sale, we are able to use the profit to cross subsidise some affordable housing. Indeed, as counter-cyclical developers we able to deliver even in times of economic hardship and drive economic growth and housing delivery.

Bristol’s new Local Plan was submitted to the Secretary of State for examination on 25 April 2024. The new Local Plan sets a direction which helps deliver our development needs today and shapes the city to meet the needs of the future. The Local Plan sets out the following ambitious targets:

Bristol’s land values are high which has an impact on the viability of housing development, often resulting in proposed developments which are not compliant with policy and for which s106/CIL receipts are insufficient to fund the infrastructure needs required to complement new housing. In the city centre where much regeneration is taking place, due to land value and viability, the most viable 'living' or residential development product for developers is Purpose Built Student Accommodation. The knock-on effect of this is increasing housing waiting lists, reinforcing temporary accommodation pressure and inflating demand on the private rented sector. The demand this creates results in an ever-growing pressure on our Housing Options Service with ‘end of private rented tenancy’ the leading cause for homelessness cases in the city.

Our Housing Revenue Account (HRA) overspend means that there is little to no headroom to take on additional borrowing to fund development of new homes. On top of this, we have seen construction industry costs increase and the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS) has forecast tender prices to rise at 4% per year every year between now and 2029. In the context of social rents having been capped, investment in decarbonising existing stock, repairs and maintenance, and Building Safety requirements limits our ability to invest in new affordable housing supply through self-financing.

While we welcome the government intention to reform Right To Buy, the decision to lower the maximum discount levels as announced in the October Budget has led to unprecedented numbers of RTB1s being received by the council.  The council has taken over 1,000 applications from the 1st to the 21st November, and unfortunately we were unprepared to deal with this increased number of applications. We have recruited additional staff members to help with this backlog but they will require inducting and training. Unable to meet the statutory timescales for responding is seeing an increased number of RTB6 forms which could be costly for the council.

Prior to the announced reforms, it cost Bristol City Council in the region of three times as much to build a new home, compared to the net receipt we generated from its sale. This significantly hampered our ability to deliver replacement homes. Since 2012 1,672 council houses have been sold through RTB, meaning an annual rent loss of £8,433,568. As argued by the LGA, flexibility should be built into the scheme so that Right to Buy receipts can be combined with other government grants or funding such as the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) to deliver new, acquire existing and regenerate social homes. This would particularly help in relation to bringing forward brownfield redevelopment or other sites with exceptional costs, for example, cost of remediation or general viability issues.  

Brownfield regeneration

Bristol City Council is pursuing several major regeneration schemes, however, development viability on brownfield sites is often hindered by high remediation costs, necessitating greater financial support or flexibility to unlock projects.  Due to national and international shocks we have seen supply chains impacted, leading to further viability challenges, and a stalled site in the city at Redcliffe Wharf. This impacts affordable housing delivery where developers, due to viability constraints, deliver below policy compliant and sometimes no affordable homes.

Supported housing

Supported housing reduces reliance on TA and addresses rising demand and costs in Adult Social Care. Nationally and locally, Adult Social Care costs have surged due to increasing numbers of people with multiple, complex disadvantages, making care delivery more challenging and resource intensive. Expanding Specialised Supported Housing (SSH) for individuals with complex needs is a key strategy to ease budget pressures and improve care quality.

Bristol City Council is a national leader in SSH development, with 70 units currently underway. A recent partnership with Elim Housing Association created a bespoke lifelong home for a young woman with severe learning disabilities and Autism, who had spent over 22 years in a locked hospital ward. Through Elim’s investment and a multi-disciplinary team, she moved into a purpose-built community home and has thrived in less restrictive conditions for nearly two years—demonstrating SSH’s transformative impact.

However, securing capital funding remains a major challenge due to high development costs. We are exploring ways to unlock additional funding by collaborating with providers. Recently, we funded a 6-unit scheme at Oldland Common through NHS England’s capital grant programme, which is limited to £16m nationally; Bristol received £3m for this project. NHSE-funded schemes rely on not-for-profit Registered Providers, whose capacity is constrained by high build costs and lack of access to Homes England grants available for general needs housing. Currently, no public subsidy—such as discounted land or grants—is permitted for SSH beyond NHSE funding. Amending this would significantly boost delivery.

Despite these constraints, we have:

 

January 2026