'Innovative' housing project's back on track

A FLAGSHIP 'innovative housing' development in Bristol that ran into trouble two years ago, with people having their deposits paid back to them, is on track again after the entire site was bought by two housing associations.

- TRISTAN CORK

The purchase of all 185 homes on the troubled Bonnington Walk development in Lockleaze by housing associations GreenSquare and Bromford now means that all of the homes will either be rented or sold as 'affordable homes', and half will go to people from Lockleaze.

Local people who have managed to snap up one of the homes under a low-cost home-ownership scheme are celebrating this week, and the first people to move into the rented homes will begin getting the keys in the first week of July.

Amy Bishop who will be one of Bonnington Walk's first residents, said: "I'm so excited to pick up the keys for my new home in Lockleaze, an up-and-coming area of Bristol which buyers like me are often priced out of."

The project, on the council-owned green space between the original 1950s Lockleaze estate and the railway line, was initially given planning permission five years ago and was a flagship development under the previous Labour administration of Mayor Marvin Rees.