News / Housing
Labour slam Greens dropping affordable homes targets for developers
Bristol council chiefs have quietly scrapped how many affordable homes developers need to provide, it is claimed.
The authority’s change in planning guidance to councillors and officers means housebuilders who already have planning permission can renegotiate previously agreed levels of affordable housing if they say costs mean the original number promised can no longer be provided.
Labour says the advice – effectively a policy change – in a recently published document called a practice note is “a developers’ charter” and “beyond belief”.
Bristol City Council’s Green leaders say the aim is to ensure much-needed homes that are not being built are delivered and that there is a “massive risk” that regeneration projects over the next 15 years in the city centre will not happen without the intervention.
Labour said the result would be fewer affordable homes built – zero in some cases – or the public sector paying the developer to come up with the number it first thought of.
Bristol’s Labour group leader, Tom Renhard, said: “This is a developers’ charter. Pure and simple.
“Everyone knows Bristol is already short on truly affordable housing.
“The Greens’ answer to the housing crisis was first to scrap plans for over 2,000 new council homes, then sell existing council homes at auction, and now give developers permission to build even fewer affordable homes.
“It’s beyond belief. I don’t know whether they’re doing this because they have no principles or if they’ll just sign off on anything put in front of them, but it’s not good enough.
“When the Green Party leadership promised to get developers to start work on sites with extant planning permission, I don’t think this is what anyone had in mind.
“This plan means the council will have to take the developers’ word as gospel.
“If they say they can’t afford to build a single affordable home, the Green-led council will accept it.
“This shows why their neoliberal approach of relying solely on the private sector to build the homes Bristol needs is doomed to fail.
“They are putting their trust entirely in wealthy corporations and giving them everything they want.”
Bristol’s Labour group leader Tom Renhard has recently started a new day job as the senior communications officer for Bristol North East MP Damien Egan – photo: Ellie Pipe
Economy & skills committee vice-chair, Jenny Bartle, Green councillor for Easton, said: “The main purpose of the change to the affordable housing practice note is to allow us to deliver much-needed homes that are currently not being built.
“This is in response to the viability crisis we are facing in the centre of Bristol, which means developers can no longer afford to build themselves and which poses a massive risk to the regeneration projects that are planned over the next 15 years.
“This change will allow us to explore more options, like grant funding, for sites where this is an issue so that we can deliver the homes we know Bristol desperately needs.
“If we cannot find a way to provide all the affordable housing in a development, this may include going back to the table to look at this.
“But this will be a last resort, and Greens are committed to continuing our excellent track record on affordable housing.
“People cannot live in planning permissions, and we think compromise is important where one or two affordable houses may be holding up the delivery of 100 much-needed homes.
“Whilst the council is taking this step to tackle the house-building crisis, the government must provide funding for a new generation of social housing, end right-to-buy and work with councils on long-term solutions.”
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Read more: Bristol smashed affordable homes records in 2025
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Renhard accused council leaders of a “behind-closed-doors stitch-up” because the decision was not made in public or subject to a vote of councillors.
Don Alexander, (Labour councillor for Avonmouth & Lawrence Weston, told the economy & skills committee on Monday that the new guidance should have come to a vote.
Alexander said: “We have a duty to say this is what we want or this is not what we want, and not just for the administration or officers to put that out.”
He told committee chairman Andrew Brown: “It’s for you, chair, politically, to make sure that the governance process pins us down and that we are responsible for all that’s going on and for the challenging decisions that need to be made.”
Lib Dem councillor Brown said: “The affordable housing practice note was originally going to come to this committee but it got superseded by decisions made in relation to an outstanding project that pre-empted what was in the practice note.
“Practice notes can be published under delegated authority, so I’m happy to own that politically and to own the decision in the end not to bring that to committee for the sake of time limits and getting it published and out there and providing that guidance to the development community.”
Work recently started to build homes on the former Baltic Wharf caravan park – photo: Goram Homes
Brown’s comments came as the committee debated the findings of a cross-party taskforce into the “profound changes to the delivery of new development in the city”.
The task group heard this was due to significant increases in construction costs, a reluctance from housing associations to invest in city centre high-rise developments, and the impact of the requirements in the Building Safety Act 2022, following the Grenfell disaster.
Bristol City Council director of economy of place, Alex Hearn, told the meeting that the introduction of the Building Safety Regulator had introduced an additional layer on the design and structure of buildings over 18 metres.
Hearn said: “It is almost impossible to underestimate the impact this has had on the development of our cities.
“It is on average taking 12 per cent away of a building from something that you can either sell or rent, so it’s reducing the amount of value generated from a building, and that is creating a lot of pressure on the viability of a development.
“It is adding months and months to the regulatory process, and the costs of engaging with that process are really significant.
“For a large building the size of Debenhams in the city centre it would be millions and millions of pounds just to go through that extra regulatory process.
“It is resulting in a much more expensive way to make buildings, and that combined with the loss of value is leading to real pressure on the ability of developments to bring forward affordable housing without significant subsidy from Homes England.
“Even if it is viable or subsidy is available, housing associations are pivoting away from acquiring affordable housing in these types of buildings and are instead focusing on lower rise buildings.”
Main photo: Martin Booth
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