Meet the Bristol mayor candidate: Marvin Rees

Marvin Rees couldn’t have timed it better.

Just as the interview is winding up, a woman returns from her run around St George Park and, spotting the current mayor, pauses to sing the praises of the new Hope Rise ZED Pods buildings where she lives.

The unique ‘homes on stilts’ is one of the development schemes that have come to fruition over the last five years as part of collaborative efforts to tackle Bristol’s housing crisis.

“Homes is the thing I’m most proud of,” says Rees, sitting down on the edge of the skate park in the sun an hour or so earlier.

Marvin Rees at the new Hope Rise ZedPods in St George – photo by Ellie Pipe

The Labour mayor sailed to victory on a platform of building much-needed housing in 2016, pledging to build 2,000 homes a year – 800 of them affordable – by 2020.

According to figures released in September by Bristol City Council, 1,350 and 1,994 homes were completed each year in Bristol in the four years from 2016/17 to 2019/20. Of those, between 188 and 312 each year were affordable, leading to some raised eyebrows about the levels of delivery.

Renewing his commitment to house building for 2021, Rees has admitted there have been challenges over the last five years but that “all taps are now open” on delivering homes.

“I’ve stood on doorsteps with families who have new homes,” he says. “A good quality, warm home in a good community is one of the single most significant policy tools we have. So that’s been incredible.”

Sitting on the skate park where his three children often come to skate, his bike propped up by his side, Rees seems at ease as he reminisces on the days when the vast red building at the top of the park was a school (it’s now the Sikh temple, Siri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara Bristol, and Bristol Movement Space).

After being defeated at the ballot by former independent mayor George Ferguson (him with the red trousers) in 2012, Rees was voted in as mayor of Bristol in 2016, becoming Europe’s first directly elected black mayor.

Looking back, the Labour politician says: “It’s been an amazing five years, it’s been a real honour. I grew up in this city. And I’ve seen the best and the worst of it; I’ve experienced the best and worst of it.

“And the opportunity to take a position where you get to address some of the challenges, while also holding on to the aspiration you have for the city, is really special. What’s also been amazing is, is the opportunity to work with people to do that.”

Growing up in Bristol in the 1970s and 80s, Rees lived with his mum in Lawrence Weston, St Paul’s and Easton and went to four schools in total, including what was St George School in Lawrence Hill (now City Academy), before going on to study at Swansea University.

He also attended Eastern University, a private Christian university in Pennsylvania, where he completed a master’s degree in global economic development.

The Labour politician had careers in public health and broadcast journalism and was part of the Yale World Fellows Program class of 2019, where he met Alexei Navalny, the most prominent critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

His early experiences have shaped his politics but, speaking candidly on Tuesday morning, he says it has recently hit him that is actually his mum’s experiences that have been his main driving force.

“I realised it was, it was the sense of disrespect my mum experienced as a white woman with a brown baby in 1972, and everything that went with that,” explains Rees.

“It gave me a drive to make sure that other people get more opportunities.”

He adds: “I think my mum’s single most significant intervention for me was making sure that I knew I was wanted.

“I think the world didn’t want me but she wanted me and my family wanted me and I hold those two things together and that’s been very powerful for me, and very powerful in shaping my politics.”

Getting back to politics, Rees says his approach to leadership is “to find fantastic people who want to get fantastic things done and help them to get it done”. This has seen the launch of a citywide response to period poverty and child hunger, as well as the establishment of the One City Office and City Leap.

Marvin Rees pulled the plug on plans for an arena at Temple Island in 2018

Over his five years in office, the Labour mayor has met with plenty of criticism from his political opponents. Two high profile examples include the controversial decision to move plans for the city’s long-awaited arena from land by Temple Meads to Filton and the Bristol Energy fiasco.

Rees maintains the YTL arena plans at Filton’s Brabazon Hangars are more cost-effective, because of the private investment, and greener as they are re-purposing an existing building. He has also put at least part of the blame for the Bristol Energy losses on the previous administration, who set it up in the first place in 2015.

But it isn’t just his opponents who have criticised Rees, with former Labour councillor Jo Sergeant recently writing a stinging resignation letter that accused her ex-colleagues of bullying, humiliation and a lack of respect from party leaders in Bristol.

Responding to such accusations, he says: “Jo says what Jo says, but I don’t think it’s true. It’s not the way we lead. If you talk to people we’ve been working in within the city, they will testify it’s a very inclusive leadership.”

He concedes the mayoral model – which two out of the four main parties want to scrap – is a challenge for councillors, but argues there is actually more opportunity to get things done, pointing out the recent collaboration between Labour deputy mayor Asher Craig and Green Paula O’Rourke to launch a citizens’ assembly.

And what of the concerns that the One City office and City Leap projects are anti-democratic because of their involvement of unelected representatives from the public and private sectors?

“Democracy is more than councillors,” says Rees, who scrapped his original cross-party cabinet in 2017.

“I grew up in a city in which the whole political process was disengaged, distant and non-inclusive.

“This is the most inclusive and diverse political leadership the city has ever known.”

With the mayoral hopeful Sandy Hore-Ruthven pulling out all the stops to become the city’s first Green mayor, Rees has noticeably shifted a focus towards environmental issues, having previously come under fire for not opposing the expansion of Bristol Airport.

One of his pledges is to dedicate 30 per cent of Bristol City Council’s land to nature – doubling the current figure of 15 per cent. The city declared an ecological emergency last year and Rees says there is an urgent need to take action on this.

But how will that square with his commitment to house building?

“It is challenging,” says Rees. “If it was easy everyone would just do it. This is challenging because we do have to this but it’s not an anti-development document, we still have to build houses, we need space, and the city is growing by what 90 to 100,000 people over the next 25 years.

“30 per cent is what we should be pushing for and that’s what we will push for, but it means that we’re going to have to ask ourselves some really big questions about density, about where we build on brownfield sites.”

He also argues that tackling the climate and ecological crisis have been at the heart of decision-making for some time, siting projects such as the City Leap and plans for a mass transit system.

What has been the biggest frustration as mayor?

“It’s that it’s never finished,” says Rees. “So you can see successes, but you don’t get the whole system change that you would like to see with an end to poverty.”

Rees hints at changes that will be made if he secures a second term as mayor, saying “there’s still a big piece of work to be done at the local authority on culture change”.

Whether he wins or loses at the ballot on May 6, the current mayor says he will take some time to spend with his wife, Kirsten, three children and his wider family.

Reflecting on his time in office and the city in general, Rees adds: “My sense has always been that we are a city of contrasts, a fractured city that has an amazing story to tell to the outside world. But it’s also a city in which you know we have areas in the top most deprived in England, and were racially fractured and class fractured.”

Main photo by Aphra Evans

Read more: Meet the Bristol mayor candidate: John Langley