Bristol City Council faces a £1m bill to demolish flats

Bristol City Council wants to spend more than £1 million knocking down substandard flats it was warned never to buy in the first place.

The 70 flats at Torpoint Road and Kingswear Road, in Bedminster, are in a poor state of repair, with damp, exposed wiring, peeling paint and blocked-up windows.

Residents describe the area as a "ghost town" as all but 10 tenants or leaseholders have left the site.

The council now wants to pay the remaining residents to leave so the site can be knocked down and potentially redeveloped into 474 homes as part of a larger project.

The full 9.6 hectare site includes the 70 flats, 60 flats owned by Knightstone Housing Association, vacant allotments at Torpoint Road and other council land.

The authority has been forced to improve the offer of compensation to leaseholders after previously refusing requests from owners who wanted to sell up and move on.

People with flats at Torpoint Road have been complaining about the state of the site for years, after a number of break-ins and an assault.

Security and maintenance costs are expected to be more than £58,000 this year, the council wants £200,000 for ongoing project management and estimates demolition and relocation will cost a further £1.1m.

In 2005, the council agreed to pay £2.5m for the flats to be refurbished, but failed to do so when it realised the work would cost a lot more.

Concerns were raised about the flats more than 20 years ago, officers told a meeting of the quality of life scrutiny committee yesterday.

Alison Napper said: "The council bought them from a developer with financial difficulties in the 1980s. At the time there were discussions about whether they should be bought or not. It turns out not, because they have inherent problems."

Those problems include ground movement, poor drainage and inadequate ventilation and a report to the committee listed further issues.

It stated: "There have been several successful break-ins to void properties, and boilers, etc, have been removed. One break-in also involved a tenant being assaulted – this tenant has subsequently moved.

"A number of measures have been put in place including the introduction of security patrols and a void management procedure. The number of complaints from remaining tenants, leaseholders and nearby residents is, however, increasing."

The council previously offered market value for the properties plus £2,000 compensation but upped this offer to market value plus 10 per cent when leaseholders pointed out that waiting for a Compulsory Purchase Order buyout was the better option.

By the end of April one leaseholder and two tenants are due to be left at the site, still negotiating with the council.

But a number of tenants the Evening Post spoke to complained they were being offered one-bed flats instead of their current two beds.

Pearl Bishop, 60 and retired, said: "They have offered me a one-bed flat but I don't want it. I'm moving because they want me to not because I want to."

Lee Wharton, 39, said: "If I was good enough for a two-bed flat before, why not now?"

The council cabinet is due to decide on whether to go ahead with demolition on Thursday. If approved, the council will then put together a development brief for the site.

Executive member for housing Councillor Mark Wright said tenants would be assessed by their housing needs.

He said: "There are two things that have caused the delay.

"The plan was to refurbish and early work was carried out on this, but the contractor decided it couldn't be done for £2.5m and then decided it wouldn't be possible.

"That left the situation in limbo until the plan moved to redevelopment.

"That is a complex process but then we had a property crash, and all the developers walked from the table. That has cost us two years."Housing officers [in the 1980s] had recommended the council went nowhere near those buildings but I understand the decision was overruled by the then chair of housing. That landed the council with a massive liability."