Six architecture practices have been selected by Bristol City Council to push ahead with its affordable housing plans.

Bristol is piloting a new approach which will allow Community Led Housing (CLH) projects to benefit from early architectural advice.

It is anticipated that working together and co-designing the plans will help to inspire and encourage the community groups, support innovation, and maximise the potential of small brownfield sites for affordable housing.

The effectiveness of this approach will be evaluated as a model for other local authorities.

Councillor Tom Renhard, Cabinet Member for Housing Delivery and Homes, said: "We are committed to supporting Community Led Housing and we look forward to seeing how this project helps to guide local groups and help shape their proposals to deliver high quality housing projects.

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"Building homes is a key priority for Bristol City Council. It is widely recognised that achieving our ambitions requires courage, innovation, and collaboration across the city. This will help ensure the needs of the city and its citizens are fully understood, and to create mixed and balanced communities.

"This is an exciting step in the council's Community Led Housing Land Disposal Programme 2022/2023, made possible by a Local Government Association (LGA) Housing Advisors Programme grant."

In February 2022 the council launched an Expression of Interest (EOI) process for the second round of sites identified for disposal to community groups for Community Led Housing. The LGA grant then enabled all the community groups who had submitted EOI’s to be given fully funded architectural design input, to support them to progress their ideas ahead of their formal land applications in August 2022.

Ellen Grist, from the Bristol Housing Festival, said: "We were delighted to have the opportunity to support Bristol City Council with running this architectural competition, and hugely encouraged by the number of architecture practices applying. A brilliant opportunity for everyone involved!

"We look forward to seeing these schemes substantially progressed through this novel LGA funded programme, as well as sharing all we learn through the process to benefit other local authorities."