Deputy mayor questions audit report on Bristol Energy failure

Bristol’s deputy mayor has defended his role in Bristol Energy losing the city council millions of pounds as further cuts currently need to be made to the council’s budget.

Craig Cheney said that he feels that he has already apologised enough for the failed energy company, which was set up by Bristol City Council, losing around £46m.

The cabinet member for finance also said that he has not “particularly thought” about his next political move when his close friend and political ally Marvin Rees stands down as mayor in 2024.

Interviewed on the Bristol Cable’s Bristol Unpacked podcast, Cheney was asked about Bristol Energy, where he held the role of the council’s shareholder representative.

A report by auditors Grant Thornton published in January criticised the decision-making that resulted in millions of pounds of public money lost and questioned why the council kept propping up the company.

But talking to Neil Maggs, Cheney questioned the accuracy of that report, saying that auditors were not aware of meetings that he, mayor Marvin Rees and others had held in private.

Maggs
“Was I right in thinking that you were the person that represented the council on meetings, Bristol Holding Company meetings?

Cheney
“Yeah, so I act as the council shareholder representative yeah, on behalf of Marvin.”

Maggs
“And I think in the Grant Thornton report into the last full financial year of Bristol Energy operations said that the flow of information from the company shareholders to the council cabinet was ‘inadequate’. Was it you that was inadequate in bringing the information back to the council?”

Cheney
“I mean, I don’t want to get too much into that. So if you can imagine, all that Grant Thornton have access to are the public meetings. What they don’t have access to are the conversations that, you know, me and Marvin and cabinet may have in private session. So, you know, it’s difficult to…”

Maggs
“Chatham House rules and all that.”

Cheney
“Well, it’s just impossible for them to know really. And there was some lessons in there about how we minuted meetings and all these sorts of things, and some of that stuff we’ve taken forward. I don’t think that was necessarily a fair reflection. What that really meant was in the public cabinet meeting when you discussed it, you didn’t explain X, Y and Z. But what they did point out was because the public meetings were exempt, they weren’t able to see them and we hadn’t minuted those meetings. So some of that stuff was actually mentioned in the publicly exempt meetings because we are very thorough, we do have a legal team, we do go through these these things in advance, you know.”

The failed energy company, set up by Bristol City Council, lost around £46m – photo: Martin Booth

Maggs
“Do you accept that maybe the charge or the suggestion that what was being fed back didn’t maybe paint a picture of the company failing as much as it could do, which then in effect had the knock-on effect of delay which ended up costing the taxpayer, you know, 40-odd million pounds. Do you accept that?”

Cheney
“No, I don’t think so. So I think the problem is when you’re in a business like the energy business, the public face of it has to be positive. You have to be, you know, you’re a salesman, whenever you stand up, and you talk on behalf of the company because you’re having to… So for example, we had a few bad reports by a few other people in the council making, or leaking details I suppose to be frank. And suddenly the creditors for the company disappeared and when you can’t get free lines of credit, you’ve then got to start buying credit which costs you more money. So you have to be, you have to walk a very difficult tightrope and try to be as transparent as you possibly can, whilst also making sure that while you’re in public, you’re not doing things that actually make the position worse for the company. So you end up in this in this weird position of being a salesperson for something, you know.”

Maggs
“So you have to talk it up?”

Cheney
“You have to talk it up exactly. Just because you’re in public and it’s a company. This is why it’s very difficult for local authorities to be involved in quite complicated markets like that and why we probably wouldn’t have got into in the first place.”

Maggs
“Do you accept it was a failure?”

Cheney
“Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.”

Maggs
“Would you apologise? Was it your failure, your failing?”

Cheney
“It delivered social value. I don’t think it was our failure, I’ll be honest. I think we did, when we came there was already a huge chunk of money invested in the company. We then spent a number of years trying to get that back effectively, by trading our way out of it.”

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Maggs
“George Ferguson feels like he was being blamed when I interviewed him, five years on, that I’m being blamed for something that’s that’s absurdly ridiculous. And it’s politicking. You presumably disagree with that?”

Cheney
“Well, I don’t I don’t know. I mean, so when that energy company was set up, there was cross-party support. So I don’t think it’s George’s fault. I just think it was something that perhaps we naively went into. And if you look at how, what’s the word, optimistic I suppose, the business plans were right at the beginning there then, you know, you can see why councillors and George and others, might have felt that they were, we were on to a winner there. Of course, it didn’t turn out to be that way at all and we spent the next five years frantically trying to extricate ourselves from it in a way that wouldn’t lose the taxpayer any money.”

Maggs
“Should you have got out sooner? Do you look back? Do you regret that?”

Cheney
“So we commissioned, yeah, a couple of years in we commissioned some work to say should we get a or will thus turn a profit? And you know, the company that provided that told us absolutely, that you should stay in it. That it is a risky business, but we think you’ll make your money back. And actually, you know, there is still, if we’d been willing to put more money in we could have kept the company going and there is a potential that at some point it will break even, but you know, we weren’t willing to put any more money and we made a promise that we would stop at 37 (million pounds).”

Maggs
“So there’s an irony here, Craig, that we’re asking for £23m of cuts through consultation and that’s almost that’s like half the money that was lost to the taxpayer.”

Cheney
“The difference is that that’s capital funding one-off. £23m a year is £100m in five years, in four years.”

Maggs
“Do you feel that the council have apologised for this enough?”

Cheney
“Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. I stood up and did those interviews myself.”

Craig Cheney and Helen Holland are the only two surviving members of Marvin Rees’ original 2016 rainbow cabinet – photo: Bristol24/7

The conversation then turned to Cheney’s political ambitions. So could he stand for mayor of Bristol or metro mayor in the future?

“To be honest I haven’t particularly thought about that at the moment,” the deputy mayor answered.

Cheney
“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time as deputy mayor of Bristol. It is very very time consuming. It is very very emotionally and mentally and physically tiring.”

Maggs
“And if you went for the big job…”

Cheney
“It would be even more emotionally… And I have to think about the impact on my family. The bottom half of the internet is very unpleasant, very unfair and very unkind. You know, my wife, for example, doesn’t enjoy reading things people write about Marvin. She would certainly not enjoy reading them about me.”

Maggs
“Yeah, people don’t recognise and see that. What does it feel like for you because obviously you’re a colleague but also a friend of the mayor, when you see some of that stuff? How does that feel?”

Cheney
“Well, I mean, I just, I don’t really read it anymore. Because it used to upset me because it does upset me. Whatever people think, Marvin is a good, honest, pragmatic and thoughtful man. And the things are laid at him in the press, not in the press sorry, in the comments section of, I don’t know, Bristol Live’s Facebook page or something, are really sometimes very very unfair and sometimes much worse than that, you know, outright outrageous really, it is very hurtful some of that stuff. And it’s led to death threats and other things that are awful, you know, pull back your curtains and it says ‘Marvin die’ outside your kid’s bedroom window. How’s that going to make you feel?”

Maggs
“I also think, if there was anybody who had potential out there, looking at this role, I think they would seriously think twice about doing it especially because of all that stuff.”

Cheney
“Proportionately, you are already seeing less women are applying for these sorts of roles. The criticism is very unfair, and it gets very very unpleasant. But as soon as you put a woman into that role it gets even worse.”

Maggs
“Would that put you off is my question.”

Cheney
“Yeah, it definitely does. I mean, people play the man and not the ball don’t they too often. I think that’s the problem.”

Main photo: Bristol City Council

Read more: New report reveals ‘full picture’ of Bristol Energy fiasco

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