Former cabinet member calls for boundary expansion to help solve housing crisis

Bristol can only meet its housing needs through a boundary expansion which could extend the city to as far as Keynsham.

That is the view of former cabinet member for housing, Paul Smith, who admits the idea “will be both controversial and strongly opposed” but is the best way to meet the pressing need for thousands of new homes.

Smith said that a parish council structure in the areas currently outside the city boundaries should be replicated within the expanded area, “enhancing the identity and a certain level of autonomy of Bristol’s historic villages and the 20th century housing estates”.

Smith resigned from Marvin Rees’ cabinet in September 2020 to become the CEO of Elim Housing, a charitable social landlord.

“I come to this essay about the future while also deeply immersed in the past dreams for housing in the city for work I have been doing on the history of the Hartcliffe estate,” he writes in Bristol 650: Essays on the Future of Bristol.

“In 1943 the council’s housing plan identified the need for around 30,000 new homes. Eighty years later, in 2023, the council’s draft local plan identifies a need for around 30,000 new homes.

“I could conclude this article simply by saying that in 2103 the future city will have a need for 30,000 homes, which we could just summarise as plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more it changes, the more it stays the same.”

Paul Smith in 2020, with Bristol’s talllest building, Castle Park View, taking shape behind him – photo: Qezz Gill

“In seeking to meet its housing need, Bristol, like many cities, seems to be locked into a battle between the need for more homes, the need to protect the natural environment and the desire by some to see the historic skyline unchanged.

“New housing is often opposed not just in the backyard, but from anywhere within the eyeline.

“One person’s developable brownfield site is someone else’s clear view, urban park or conservation site. One person’s developable scrubland is someone else’s site of important biodiversity or crucial open space.

“All these things can be true – it is a matter of genuine dispute.”

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Read more: ‘Bristol should learn from cities like Barcelona and ban high rises from its centre’

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Smith says that we also need to ask what we mean by ‘Bristol’, with the city’s boundaries growing over time and incorporating surrounding villages.

Bristol’s most recent expansion in 1949 brought the historic village of Bishopsworth into the city.

The original ambition after the Second World War “was a much more dramatic expansion” says Smith, including Patchway, Filton, Hambrook, Mangotsfield, Kingswood, Downend, Warmley, Oldland, Whitchurch, Dundry, Long Ashton and Portishead, which would have been around twice the size of our current city.

The village of Bishopsworth pre-dates the city of Bristol – photo: Ellie Pipe

Smith says that “Bristol, blocked from expanding in the 1940s, had to resolve its dramatic housing demand (the same housing demand as now) by building housing outside its boundaries for Bristol residents”.

“Those developments included council housing in Keynsham, Cadbury Heath, Kingswood, Nailsea, Filton, Yate and Long Ashton.

“Bristol was able to expand its housing need by exporting them to those other areas. Bristol is now an island of council housing with municipal homes in the surrounding authorities all sold to housing associations.

“My view, which will be both controversial and strongly opposed – possibly as strongly as the objections after the Second World War to the city’s proposed expansion when the city leadership was compared to Nazism – is that Bristol can only meet its housing needs through a boundary expansion not dissimilar to the one the ‘City Fathers and Mothers’ envisaged in the 1940s, maybe even more extensive, taking in Keynsham too.

“This would give the city access to more land for new homes, a larger tax base and a boundary which reflects the reality of what constitutes the city if one looked at an aerial photo rather than the archaic local authority boundaries.”

Smith adds: “People’s homes sit at the centre of their lives. Unfortunately, many are failed by poorly designed or constructed homes and badly designed communities.

“Bristol has enormous talent, and using this to address the quality of our homes and neighbourhoods would have a significant impact upon many other areas of civic life, including health (physical and mental), care, cost of living, crime and anti-social behaviour, climate change and the local economy.

“The opportunities will require a partnership between the council, the government, public and private bodies, and – importantly – the citizens of Bristol.

“The tenacity required would be great, the thinking long-term and the investment significant, but the benefits and returns would be enormous.”

A boundary marker on the Saltwell Viaduct in Whitchurch separating Bristol and Somerset – photo: Martin Booth

Paul Smith will be taking part in a panel discussion after a screening of the documentary, Normal For Hartcliffe, at Watershed on October 19. For tickets and more information, visit www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/future-city-normal-for-hartcliffe-tickets-690789348537

Main photo: Martin Booth

Read next:

• Following all 44 miles of Bristol’s boundary on foot
• Paul Smith: ‘I like to think housing in Bristol has changed for the better’
• Screening of short film set in Hartcliffe

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