Bristol's Green Experiment: Selling the Parachute Before You Jump. Part 1.

How to make inequality worse while promising to fix it—a masterclass in bullshit.

A bird’s eye view of Bristol’s least and most deprived areas, according to the new 2025 England deprivation index. It’s the first time since 2019 that the Government has produced a deep-dive into levels of deprivation or affluence, looking at income, employment, health, education, housing and poverty. On the left is an area of Henleaze that is ranked as the least deprived in Bristol - and in the top 0.3 per cent least deprived in England. On the right is an area of Hartcliffe that is ranked as the most deprived in Bristol, and among the top 0.6 per cent most deprived in England (Image: Google Maps)

This week, the government published its 2025 deprivation index. Hartcliffe remains in England’s bottom 0.6% most deprived neighbourhoods. Knowle West sits comfortably in the bottom 5%. Meanwhile, Henleaze—less than a mile away—ranks in the top 0.3% most affluent areas in the entire country.

The gap hasn’t budged since 2019.

Here’s the thing: that’s about to look like the good old days.

Bristol’s Green Party administration—elected in May 2024 on promises to build 1,000 affordable homes per year—has decided the best way to address the housing crisis is to sell 1,222 existing council homes.

You read that right. They campaigned on building more. They’re governing by flogging off what they’ve got.

It’s like a fire department responding to a house fire by selling the fire engine.

The Arithmetic of Catastrophe.

Let’s be clear about what happens when you apply Green housing policy to Bristol’s deprivation problem:

Starting position: 27,000 council homes, 21,600 households waiting, Hartcliffe ranked 211th most deprived in England.

Green policy 2024-2029: Sell 1,222 homes, build maybe 150-200 new ones.

Net result by 2029: 1,000+ fewer council homes, 25,400+ households waiting, Hartcliffe ranked 150-180th most deprived (worse).

They knew the deprivation data. The 2019 index showed the inequality. The 2025 index confirmed that nothing had improved. And they looked at that information and thought, “You know what would help? Fewer council homes.”

It’s diagnosing severe dehydration and prescribing salt tablets.

The Temporary Accommodation Death Spiral.

When you don’t have enough permanent council housing, families end up in temporary accommodation—hotels, B&Bs, emergency housing.

Here’s the scam: the council pays full price, but the government only reimburses at 90% of housing benefit rates frozen since 2011. Actual rental costs have soared. The reimbursement hasn’t moved.

Bristol’s temporary accommodation subsidy gap jumped from £7.2 million in 2021/22 to a projected £17-18.5 million in 2024/25.

That’s money the council pays out that the government doesn’t pay back. Every year. Forever. Until you build enough permanent housing.

So naturally, the Greens are selling permanent housing, which keeps families in temporary accommodation, which increases the subsidy gap, which consumes more budget, which requires more cuts, which worsens deprivation.

It’s an ouroboros made of spreadsheets and broken promises.

Every pound burned on temporary accommodation is a pound that can’t fund youth services in Hartcliffe, community centres in Knowle West, libraries in Barton Hill. The communities that need help most get the least.

The Brighton Blueprint.

Brighton’s Greens spent years promising transformation while delivering bin strikes, closed public toilets, and weeds growing through pavements. In May 2023, they got demolished—lost 13 seats, went from 20 councillors to 7.

Labour won not because Labour was brilliant, but because the Greens were catastrophically incompetent at basic governing.

Here’s what matters: Brighton’s deprivation didn’t improve when Labour took over.

Because the structural problem—lack of social housing—doesn’t get fixed by changing which colour rosette runs the council. It gets fixed by building housing at scale for 15-20 consecutive years.

Bristol in 2029 will mirror this precisely: dramatic political collapse without immediate social improvement.

The Greens will lose seats. Labour will reclaim control. Voters will have their revenge.

But Hartcliffe will still be in England’s most deprived 1%. The 25,400 households on the waiting list won’t have homes. The temporary accommodation gap will still be consuming £20-25 million annually.

Political change is easy. Fixing the damage takes decades.

The Bottle Yard Farce.

In July 2025, the Green administration’s attempt to privatise Bristol’s profitable, publicly-owned Bottle Yard Studios collapsed after three months.

Cost to taxpayers: £430,000 in consultancy fees. For nothing.

Tony Dyer, the Green leader, argued the publicly-owned studios had “hit a glass ceiling” and needed private investment. The council refuses to publish the accounts, claiming commercial sensitivity, despite telling councillors the studios are profitable.

So: profitable public asset needs privatising because... nobody’s quite sure, really.

That £430,000? Roughly the cost of keeping school crossing patrols, which they’re also cutting.

Profitable studios were nearly privatised for no clear reason at enormous cost, school crossing patrols were cut to save money, all while pushing through traffic schemes that 54% of consultation respondents opposed.

It’s a masterclass in pissing off everyone simultaneously.

The Budget Death Spiral.

The administration faces £43 million in required savings for 2025/26. Their choices:

• School crossing patrols: Cut

• Library funding: Postponed, still planned

• Museum services: Postponed, still planned

• Black bin collections: Every 3-4 weeks

• Pay-and-display on the Downs: £200,000 projected revenue

• Charges for disabled parking bays: £100,000 projected revenue

Textbook regressive cuts. They hit deprived communities hardest.

Residents in Hartcliffe (bottom 0.6% nationally) lose services and face new charges. Residents in Henleaze (top 0.3% nationally) barely notice.

The inequality gap—already 99.7 percentile points across less than a mile—widens further.

It’s managed decline dressed in the language of sustainability and environmental justice.

Why Recovery Takes a Generation.

Even if Labour wins in 2029 and immediately restarts council house building, here’s the timeline:

2029-2030: Stop the bleeding. Halt sales. Restart programmes. First new homes delivered late 2031 (2+ years minimum).

2030-2034: Deliver maybe 400-500 homes per year. Add 2,000 homes. Waiting list still 23,000+. Temporary accommodation costs still £18-20 million annually.

2034-2039: If building continues at 600-800 homes per year, add another 3,000-4,000 homes.

2039: Waiting list down to 18,000-20,000. Hartcliffe moved from 150th to 200th most deprived—a marginal improvement. Still bottom 1% nationally.

2044: After fifteen years of sustained building, Hartcliffe might move from the bottom 1% to the bottom 2-3%.

The children born in Hartcliffe in 2025 will be voting age before they see meaningful improvement.

That’s not political commentary. That’s arithmetic.

It’s a Big Club, and You Ain’t In It.

They campaigned as the authentic alternative. The party that actually cared about inequality, housing, and environmental justice. They said they’d build 1,000 homes per year. They said they’d put social justice at the heart of decision-making.

Then they got power and discovered the easiest way to balance the budget is to sell council houses—the very thing they condemned in opposition.

It’s not hypocrisy. It’s worse. It’s institutional capture.

The Greens aren’t more corrupt than Labour or the Tories. They’re just newer at pretending their hands are clean. Labour at least had the decency to look guilty. The Greens maintain moral superiority while doing identical or worse things.

Voters in Hartcliffe don’t give a shit about theoretical environmental justice when you’re cutting their kids’ crossing patrol, reducing bin collections, selling the council housing they’re waiting for, and increasing transport costs with schemes they explicitly opposed.

So who exactly benefits? Not people in deprived areas. Not people on the housing waiting list. Not people facing service cuts.

The beneficiaries are the same people who benefit from every administration: consultants who get £430,000 for botched privatisation attempts. Private landlords paid for temporary accommodation at above-market rates. Developers who don’t have to compete with council building programmes.

It’s a big club. And if you’re in Hartcliffe waiting for a council house, you ain’t in it.

The Uncomfortable Truth.

Bristol’s inequality will be worse in 2030 than today. Hartcliffe will be more deprived. Knowle West will have declined. The gap between the rich and the less well off will be wider.

This isn’t speculation—it’s arithmetic based on current policy decisions.

The Green administration will be punished electorally in 2029. They’ll lose seats. It won’t matter.

Labour will inherit a disaster that takes fifteen years to fix, assuming they do everything right, which they probably won’t.

The children growing up in Hartcliffe today—living in England’s 211th most deprived neighbourhood—will be adults before they see meaningful change.

That’s not political failure. That’s generational damage.

And the most frustrating part? It was completely avoidable.

If the Greens had simply followed their own manifesto—build 1,000 homes per year, don’t sell existing stock, invest in deprived areas—the 2030 deprivation index would show marginal improvement rather than decline.

But they didn’t. They couldn’t. Because when you get into power, you discover governing is about choosing which promises to break and how to spin the breaking as pragmatism.

The arithmetic doesn’t care about good intentions, and reality doesn’t bend to ideology.

The deprivation data is the score. The housing policy is the game. And Bristol just spent four years playing to lose.