The housebuilding boom in the West could be heading to derailment due to the sheer lack of space coming forward, says Bristol builder Helm Construction.
The firm said that planning bottlenecks combined with the lack of a definitive plan to identify and develop Brownfield sites, will continue to affect development.
Helm Construction has pushed to increase the use of brownfield sites over building on Green Belt land.
Paul Evans, the Managing Director, said: “While it’s good to see that Bristol City Council has identified space for 200 new homes on the former sidings at Ashton Gate, this really is a drop in the ocean compared to the thousands of new homes required”.
The latest figures have suggested that ahead of civil engineering work, housebuilding is leading the rebound in the construction sector, while commercial building projects had its slowest growing pace in two years.
Currently across the city, Helm Construction is active on a dozen sites, working on structures from apartments to town houses. The Piecemeal’ development, according to Evans “will not deliver the number of homes within the timetable local stakeholders demand”.
However, he thinks that Bristol is in need of a “masterplan”, similar to the one introduced by Wakefield Council that would see a regeneration of a swathe of land and former industrial premises in Castleford.
He added: “Where possible we believe we should be addressing every scrap of brownfield land before sending diggers on to open fields, whether it falls within a designated Green Belt or not.
“In order to supply the 250,000 new homes, the Government has called for Bristol to play its part by stepping up its own building programme, which only managed to deliver some 900 new homes last year”.
Mr Evans goes on to say that even though they won’t be able to earmark all of the new homes on the Brownfield, in return they will succeed in “reducing the potential impact on our countryside”.
A recent news report stated that the rapidly increasing number of new homes being approved on Green Belt land in England increased five-fold in the last five years.
He commented: “It’s clear Bristol needs a definitive list of Brownfield land and an estimate of the number of new homes which might be built on them”.
Photo by Helm Construction
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