While Bristol struggles to get affordable homes built, it seems much easier in the areas outside the city
Insider her new home, Elm Grove resident Samantha Hollis, centre, with MP Sadik Al‑Hassan, right, and left – Alliance Homes Chief Executive and Homes for the South West Chair, Louise Swain(Image: Alliance Homes)
“I feel like I’ve won the lottery”, said Samantha Hollis, as she surveyed the new home she had just moved into. “This home means I feel much brighter about the future.”
Samantha was a coach driver, earning a decent wage and living in a house she rented privately for £1,000 a month. But her life changed for the worst on an ordinary day on a regular trip. She picked up a suitcase that was heavier than she thought, and injured her back so badly it changed her life.
She couldn’t work, and then she lost her job. Suddenly, the £1,000 a month house with stairs and a traditional bathroom was not just too expensive but also not practical. Salvation came in the form of the council’s housing waiting list HomeChoice, a new development and a new accessible bungalow.
“I lost my job, and the house I was renting for £1,000 a month no longer suited my needs. I was struggling with the stairs, the bathroom, and the cost,” she said. “I applied for a home through HomeChoice, and since moving in, I honestly feel like I’ve won the lottery.
“There are no stairs, I don’t have to climb in and out of a bath anymore and everything is designed so well, it just works perfectly for me.
“After being told I could no longer drive, I wasn’t sure what my future would look like. But having a stable, suitable home has changed that. This home means I feel much brighter about the future. I feel very comfortable and safe here,” she added.
If the housing crisis affecting every level of Bristol’s society is about one thing, it’s about the lack of affordable housing – and Samantha’s story is a classic example of why that’s important. They say most of us are three missed payslips from facing homelessness, and Samantha’s injury at work, lost job and housing situation showed how that vulnerability can affect anyone.
New Elm Grove resident Samantha Hollis, left, with MP Sadik Al‑Hassan, and Alliance Homes Chief Executive and Homes for the South West Chair, Louise Swain(Image: Alliance Homes)
But while Samantha’s story has a happy housing ending, like anyone moving into new, purpose-built affordable and accessible housing, there is one key part that is important – her new home is in Nailsea, five miles as the crow flies, west of the edge of Bristol.
Even more importantly, the new development of 52 affordable homes is in North Somerset. The MP Samantha was proudly showing around her new home wasn’t a Bristol MP, but Sadik Al-Hassan, the first-ever Labour MP to represent Nailsea and the towns and villages between Portishead and Dundry.
Bristol Live has written extensively about the challenges of getting new, truly affordable housing built in Bristol itself. There are developers who say they can’t afford to take the financial hit on their profits, a council without the money itself to be able to fund it, and seemingly constant arguments about viability, the costs of buying the sites in the first place and then building it.
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Sites across Bristol have experienced years of delays, planning wrangles, companies going bust and changes to regulations.
But outside of Bristol, in the suburbs around the city, it appears to be a different story. At Nailsea, and in places across North Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset, and South Gloucestershire, affordable homes don’t appear to be such a problem.
Samantha’s not one of a few new residents in affordable homes on a new-build estate – all of the 52 new homes were classed as ‘affordable’ – either through a shared ownership scheme, or the vast majority as social rent, the most ‘affordable’ of ‘affordable’ home types.
From left: James Petherick, Director of housebuilder Stonewood Homes, Alliance Homes customer Samantha Hollis, MP Sadik Al‑Hassan, Alliance Homes Chief Executive and Homes for the South West Chair, Louise Swain, and Alliance Homes Service Director for New Homes, Sarah McQuatt.(Image: Alliance Homes)
Developers of the new Elm Grove estate initially won planning permission in 2021, after a year long battle with objections from Nailsea residents and the local town council – the land being developed was a public open space on the edge of the village.
The plans they all objected to were for 52 homes, with most – 36 of them – being regular homes to be sold as new-build private houses.
But after being awarded planning permission, the developers eventually struck a deal with Alliance Homes – the housing association established with the transfer of North Somerset’s council housing stock 20 years ago – and work to build them continued as all 52 of them were switched to being ‘affordable’ – for people like Samantha.
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That came through grant funding from Homes England, to effectively buy all the developers’ homes before they ever went on sale.
All of the social rent homes have now been allocated, and a few of the shared ownership homes are still available. Seeing the difference having an accessible, affordable home has meant to Samantha wasn’t lost on Alliance chief executive Louise Swan.
She’s also the chair of Homes for the South West, a coalition of the 12 biggest housing associations operating in the West Country, campaigning for more support to get affordable homes built.
“Hearing Samantha talk about what her new home means to her is genuinely motivating,” she said.
From left: James Petherick, Director of housebuilder Stonewood Homes, Alliance Homes customer Samantha Hollis, MP Sadik Al‑Hassan, Alliance Homes Chief Executive and Homes for the South West Chair, Louise Swain, and Alliance Homes Service Director for New Homes, Sarah McQuatt.(Image: Alliance Homes)
“We’re proud of what’s been achieved here, with North Somerset Council enabling the site, Homes England providing essential grant funding, and Stonewood Homes working with us to deliver these high‑quality, affordable homes.”
MP Mr Al-Hassan said he was pleased the homes were going to local people who needed them. “It was a pleasure to meet Samantha today and hear what a difference this high‑quality, affordable home has made to her confidence and day‑to‑day life,” he said.
“Elm Grove stands out as a prime example of good partnership working, showing how important it is that we not only build more desperately needed affordable homes, but build the right homes in the right places for local people,” he added.
Across North Somerset, Alliance Homes are doing what Bristol City Council ’s Goram Homes are trying to do inside the city – and building new-build council homes for people on the housing waiting list.
Alliance Homes customer Samantha Hollis, centre, with MP Sadik Al‑Hassan, left, and Alliance Homes Chief Executive and Homes for the South West Chair, Louise Swain(Image: Alliance Homes)
Half an hour’s drive south and 14 miles to the other end of North Somerset, Alliance has just started work to build more homes for local people, this time in the village of Winscombe at the foot of the Mendips.
Here, Alliance is partnering with a different developer, but again using Homes England funding to buy up 32 of the 68 new homes planned for the edge of the village. The ‘affordable’ 32 will be a mix of social rent, affordable rent and shared ownership.
“I am really pleased to see the delivery of new affordable homes moving forward,” said local councillor for Banwell and Winscombe, Joe Tristram.
“These much-needed properties will give local families the opportunity to put down roots and build their futures within our community. This development is an example of what can be achieved through effective collaboration that seeks to deliver high quality, sustainable homes for those who need them most,” he added.
Construction begins on new affordable homes in Winscombe, North Somerset – Alliance Homes Chair Simon MacSorley, Alliance Homes New Homes Manager, Helen Napierski, Woodstock Homes Managing Director, James Hutchinson,Woodstock Homes Operations Director, Wayne Cole and North Somerset Councillor Joe Tristram(Image: Alliance Homes)
While in Bristol, council planners and councillors chivvy and chide developers to increase the percentage of affordable homes, and watch seemingly helplessly as developers struggle to even muster 20 per cent affordable, or complete sites with more, out beyond Bristol’s boundaries, there seems to be little issue.
The answer, developers will say, is that it is far more expensive to build new homes on a historic old brownfield site that might have anything from a metalworks to a paper factory on it, than it is to build on a simple, flat, green field.
The issue there is that such developments which offer 30, 40, 50 or even 100 per cent ‘affordable’ homes in places like Nailsea, Coalpit Heath, Winscombe, Winterbourne or Keynsham, meet objections from local residents and environmentalists who don’t want to see green fields, hedges, copses, habitats and meadows built on – particularly around the edges of cities and their satellite towns.