Ten new council flats at Great Barn Court, Keynsham are ready to let. The district's housing register stands at 6,423 households, an eleven-year high.
Ten new council flats in Keynsham are finished and ready for people to move into. They are called Great Barn Court, and the council announced their completion on 15 September (B&NES).
The council says the site was previously council-owned land used for informal parking. The development was formerly known as Danes Court.
What has been built:
- six one-bedroom and four two-bedroom apartments
- two separate blocks
- high-performance insulation, solar photovoltaic panels and all-electric heating
- social rented housing, owned directly by the council
- three of the ten set aside for care-experienced young people
The flats will be let through Homesearch, the council’s housing register.
One of the new tenants, who the council did not name, said: “I’ve been sofa surfing for ages and it’s been really hard. I tried a shared place, but it didn’t work out. I’ve just passed my apprenticeship and I’m getting my own flat and it’s amazing. It’s the final piece of the jigsaw.”
Ten homes, and 6,423 households waiting
The council’s own return to government puts 6,423 households on its housing register at 31 March 2025. That is 551 more than a year earlier, a rise of 9.4 per cent, and the highest figure in the eleven years the current series covers (MHCLG Live Table 600).
Ten homes against that number is not a criticism of the scheme. It is the scale of the problem the scheme sits inside. The council has been clear that Great Barn Court is one step in a longer programme, and the register figure is the reason the programme exists.
Across the South West, 133,231 households were on local authority registers at the same date. The England total was 1,340,527.
How long people wait
The council’s most recent published waiting times are older than the register figure, and they are sobering. They cover lettings in 2022/23 and appear in its strategic housing evidence base.
Homesearch sorts applicants into three groups by housing need. For a two-bedroom home, the average wait for those housed was:
- Group A, urgent need with a serious risk to health, safety or wellbeing: 45 weeks
- Group B, high or medium need: 59 weeks
- Group C, low need: 198 weeks, which is close to four years
All three waits were longer than the year before. In the same year the council recorded 559 social lettings in total, 457 general needs and 102 sheltered, set against the 5,992 households its own system counted on the register at the end of that year.
Who built it, and what happens next
Great Barn Court was delivered by Aequus Construction Limited, the development company Bath and North East Somerset Council wholly owns, under the council’s B&NES Homes programme.
Councillor Matt McCabe, cabinet member for built environment, housing and sustainable development, said the scheme showed “what can be achieved when we make the best use of council-owned land”, and called it “another important step in our ambitious B&NES Homes programme”.
There is a detail in the announcement worth noting. Vic O’Brien, a non-executive director of Aequus Group, said the ten flats take the company’s total to 196 homes across its partnerships, and added: “Having completed our current construction programme, we are now looking ahead and working with the council to bring forward future sites.”
In other words the council’s own builder has finished the work it had on its books. The council lists a pipeline at Bath Western Riverside, Bath Quays North, Bath Quays South and a number of smaller sites across the district, but no start dates or unit numbers for them were published with this announcement.
What it means for you
If you need a social home in Keynsham. Letting is done through Homesearch, not by applying to the development. You have to be on the register first, and then bid for homes as they are advertised. The council’s find a home pages set out who qualifies and how to apply.
If you are a care-experienced young person. Three of the ten flats were set aside for this group. The council did not say how those three were allocated or whether more will follow at future sites.
If you are watching housing supply locally. Keynsham has far bigger schemes in the pipeline. We reported on Persimmon’s 200 homes off Charlton Road, where the grey belt rules would put 45 per cent of them, up to 90 homes, into affordable tenures, and on the draft Local Plan that proposes roughly 22,000 homes across the district. The plan is out for consultation until late October, and it is the document that decides where the next Keynsham sites go.
If you are buying rather than renting. Prices in this district fell over the last year while every neighbouring council rose. Our report on the July figures has the numbers by property type.
A note on the figures
Table 600 counts households on a council’s housing register, which is not the same as households in housing need. Councils set their own qualification rules, so the figure moves when the rules move as well as when demand does.
The two sets of numbers here do not match exactly, and that is worth saying plainly. The council’s own system counted 5,992 households on the register at 31 March 2023; its return to government for the same date was 5,313. The chart uses the government series throughout, because it is compiled on the same basis every year. The waiting times and lettings figures come from the council’s own systems and describe 2022/23, the most recent year it has published.
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