News / children
Birmingham City Council apply to convert house in Bristol into children’s home
A Bristol councillor has expressed surprise that a house in his ward is set to be converted into a children’s home by Birmingham City Council.
New processes have been put in place at City Hall following this application from Birmingham, meaning that Bristol’s planning department notify their colleagues in the children & families department of any application regarding a children’s home.
This particular application was for a property in Brislington West, with councillor Andrew Varney telling a meeting on Thursday that “we need to know what’s going on so we can have a say”.
Speaking at the children & young people policy committee, Varney said: “We noticed there was an application for a house to be converted into a home for young people.
“And when we looked into it, the application was being made by Birmingham City Council.
“So that kind of undermines our ability, I guess, that we are finding properties to make sure that our children are being cared for in-area.”
Committee chair, Christine Townsend, replied that “if Birmingham want to buy a house in Bristol and put their provider in there to run that, that’s for to them to do and that’s how it is at the national level”.
Townsend added: “I don’t think Bristol will be buying any in Birmingham though.”
Bristol City Council executive director for children & education, Hannah Woodhouse, reiterated the need to link up with the planning team.
Woodhouse said: “As (Townsend) says, we can’t necessarily stop it. We don’t always know about it… We need (council) officers to keep in touch with each other.”
Heather Storey, director of strategic improvement & collaboration at Bristol City Council, added: “We are now notified of any application for a children’s home that comes through planning.
“We will always provide feedback from a commissioning perspective on the sufficiency in that local area, what the need is, and whether we think there are risks to children and young people in that area through assuming (applicants) won’t have local knowledge, and whether we have any other vulnerable children placed in that locality.
“So I think we have a much more considered response now around planning applications.
“That doesn’t mean we can say no to them on that basis but we’re hopeful that it will mean when other authorities or indeed private applicants are applying for planning for children’s provision – and it needn’t necessarily be a children’s home – that they’re able to do that in an informed and sensible way, and with a degree of local knowledge and sufficiency knowledge that we can bring as well.”
Varney responded: “Obviously we can’t stop people from buying homes and putting in applications… but we need to know what’s going on so we can have a say.”
Birmingham City Council have been asked for comment.
Main photo: Martin Booth
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
