Bristol Post reports that Barry Parsons said Bristol City Council showed a “systematic failure to listen to and respect” council tenants in the Barton House case. His comments follow an independent report into the November 2023 evacuation, when residents were ordered out with no notice.
Barry Parsons and Barton House
Parsons, who chairs the council’s housing committee, said the council had a “culture of not recognising the needs of council tenants” and that there had been “a systematic failure to listen to tenants’ voices, and to really respect council tenants.” He also said the council housing culture reflected a wider national stigma around council housing and council tenants.
The report was commissioned by The Green Party after residents campaigned for it. It examined the circumstances around the emergency evacuation and described a failure of leadership, a lack of capacity and understanding, and missed opportunities to realise the deterioration of conditions at Barton House.
November 2023 evacuation
Residents of Barton House were evacuated with no notice in November 2023, and Parsons said the building case had brought no consequences for the individuals involved in the failures that led to it. He said the report was not meant to identify who specifically was responsible or who should be held accountable.
That leaves the report as a record of what went wrong, not a list of penalties. Parsons said, “That’s not really what we were trying to get at with the report,” and added, “I know there’s been people who are calling for some sort of comeback for individuals, but we deliberately didn’t want to do that with the report.”
Altair report findings
He said the decision to avoid naming anyone was deliberate so Altair could secure the fullest possible account of what happened, what decisions were made, and when information was known. For Residents of Barton House, the practical result is that the report sets out failure and deterioration, but not personal accountability or individual sanctions.
