News / bristol city council
‘Firesale’ of council-owned buildings mysteriously delayed
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 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.
is needed now More than ever
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.
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.
The plan for East Street Mews was to create 11 “contemporary apartments” for young homeless people, with partners working free of charge to restore the dilapidated building – photo: Martin Booth
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 Tom Renhard – who recently failed in his bid to become Labour’s candidate 2025’s West of England metro mayor elections – 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 reconvened in public, Renhard’s suggestion was suddenly approved unanimously.
The exempt discussion followed a request by John Goulandris, a Conservative councillor for 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 and East Bristol Intermediate Care at Summerhill Terrace, both in St George; and Jubilee Hall on Wedmore Vale in Knowle.
There were no internal local authority requests to repurpose Delaware House on West Town Lane in Stockwood, which was also proposed to be sold off, as is the case with the Bedminster Parade building.
None of them were deemed suitable for council housing.
Those five properties, all currently vacant, would earn the council at least £2.1m 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.”
In February, full council had approved the annual budget including a target of £21.6m selling off some of its buildings in 2024/25.
But the committee was told that the authority was set to fall short of that by £6m.
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 any way?”
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.”
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 pre-empting 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.”
Main photo: Martin Booth
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