A care home in south Bristol could be converted into a house for 27 homeless people.

The building on Acramans Road in Southville could be turned into a 15-bedroom emergency accommodation block, if a planning application submitted to Bristol City Council is successful. It would then be used to give unintentionally homeless people somewhere to stay on a short-term basis.

The planning application says that the building is currently in use as a nursing home. It has been submitted by planning agents Stokes Morgan on behalf of property business Connolly and Callaghan, which is one of the largest providers of emergency accommodation in the Bristol area.

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A letter submitted with the application says that there is "a severe shortage" of temporary accommodation for homeless people in the Bristol area, and quotes figures from a 2021/22 Public Health report which found that Bristol had the second highest number of people sleeping rough in the country that year. The report also said that 1,124 households were in temporary accommodation in the city – an increase of 700 per cent since 2013.

And the application adds: "Given that emergency housing for the homeless provides both a social and welfare benefit to the community, the proposal in effect seeks to replace one community facility with another, and is therefore acceptable in policy terms." It also says that staff on the site will ensure that neighbours will not be impacted by the change.

A letter written by a council housing officer as part of the application says: "In recent times the shortage of accommodation in Bristol means that placements in temporary accommodation has doubled since 2019 with a rapid increase in demand for shared single accommodation forming part of the pandemic recovery and a more long term cohort of homeless families in self-contained accommodation."

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