Goram and Vincent were the giants of legend who created Bristol and some of its features, such as the Avon Gorge. They were the inspiration for the name of our Council owned housing company – Goram Homes – and now we are helping them to change the face of Bristol again.

This week at Cabinet, we approved the Goram Homes pipeline of council-owned sites to be developed by Goram and its partners. These sites will now be brought forward for new market rate and affordable homes.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the need for new homes in Bristol, particularly affordable homes, and what the council and its partners are doing about it. We recently approved ambitious proposals to accelerate affordable housing delivery in Bristol to deliver 1,000 affordable homes each year from 2024. Goram Homes and their pipeline are going to play a major role in us hitting this target.

Because the land in the pipeline is council-owned, we have a greater opportunity to build the kind of homes that are needed in the city. Through the partnership model that Goram uses, we can also build developments at a faster pace, using new approaches like Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) to deliver homes that are more sustainable than those made with traditional building methods.

These aspirations are reflected in Goram’s updated pipeline. To take the city’s biggest and most ambitious future housing site – Hengrove Park – as an example, by adding this site to Goram’s pipeline, Bristol will benefit from over 700 new affordable homes when the build is completed. A significant proportion of these will be social rented council homes. That is 50% of the overall total of just over 1,400 sustainable new homes that will be delivered. In fact, out of the 2,992 new homes in Goram’s list of sites, 48% of them will be affordable – a far higher percentage than is likely with developers operating under a more ‘normal’ market model.

Affordable to whom?

We’re very aware that when we talk about “affordable” homes, it means very different things to different people. Put simply, it means housing for eligible households who cannot afford to pay market rents or are unable to buy homes at market value. Types of affordable housing include social rented properties, affordable rented properties, and shared ownership homes.

National policy defines affordable rents as 20% below the market rent. In Bristol, we’re committed to going further than this. Our priority is Social Rent, which is the most affordable of rented homes. Affordable housing providers in Bristol also cap each new letting at Local Housing Allowance levels, which are well below 80% of the market rent.

If you want to know more about affordable housing, this blog from the Bristol Housing Festival is a good place to start.

The council and Goram Homes’ approach will remain focused on building and supporting mixed, balanced communities. That means a mix of affordable and market homes, with sustainability and community at their heart. By delivering homes in such a way, we can make sure that we build the homes we need to give people from across Bristol the opportunity to call somewhere home.