‘I’m no party pooper’

New Bristol mayor Marvin Rees said he won’t spoil the party in the city by taking away his predecessor’s Make Sunday Special street celebrations.

Ahead of him being sworn in at the M Shed on Monday afternoon, Rees told Bristol24/7: “There are no plans to take back Make Sunday Special. We’re not party poopers.

“But we want to do serious things. We want to make sure the city is really focused on making sure it’s inclusive and benefits all.”

Former mayor George Ferguson introduced the monthly summer street parties as one of his flagship policies. Rees said he was also committed to making a bid for European Capital of Culture.

He added: “But when we run these types of events we have to do it with the recognition that there are 91 languages in Bristol and Bristol is an unequal city, not everything is equally accessible to its people, so if we are going to do anything or run celebrations we have to very careful about being inclusive.”

Rees said he was still coming to terms with his decisive victory over Ferguson, where he took 63.5 per cent of votes to the incumbent’s 36.5 per cent, after a run-off.

“It’s a strange thing. First of all you don’t know how it feels, but after that it’s just very humbling and obviously very exciting.

“My immediate thought was this was a real honour. I was bumping into people in the shop who were saying, you know, I voted for you and I’m glad you got it. It’s very special. People just keep reminding me to enjoy it.”

He said he had learned a lot from Ferguson’s time in office and would begin making changes this week.

“I think the key thing is to make sure we are reaching out through the council boundaries to the institutions which are running Bristol and to really engage with our communities as a matter of course on a day-to-day level,” he said.

He added that he wanted to share power with councillors with a new rainbow cabinet made up of councillors from all parties.

“I think the councillors can do a lot with really engaging communities and making sure their voices are heard in the council chamber and we do things with them and not to them.”

Asked if he would step down if he didn’t meet his key pledge of building 2,000 homes a year (800 affordable), he said: “We’ve put down a target that we think is achievable and a target which is aspirational too and we’ll focus minds and then it’s up to people to decide whether the work that’s done, whether there’s a real reason, a legitimate reason, those targets haven’t been hit, or whether it’s because we haven’t pursued it or haven’t been genuine, and that’s up to the electorate to decide.”

Pressed on whether he would take responsibility personally, he replied: “We’ve put down a target that we think can be delivered by talking to developers we know and then we’ll pursue that and make a judgement about how successful we’ve been at pursuing that.

“We’ve made it our number one priority and we’ll pursue that and every election is about the electorate making a judgement about the efforts and competence against targets they’ve put down and also against the challenges that have come up which they didn’t anticipate.”

Rees said he will also work on bringing a ‘metro mayor’ to the Bristol region, which could unlock £1 billion of funding and new powers over transport and housing.

“I’m going to I start to talk to our neighbouring authorities. I haven’t been involved in those conversations until now.

“We will talk about how we do work together, we have to. That’s how we are going to secure our future prosperity and that’s how we are going to meet those future challenges across the boundaries.”

Read more: Who is mayor Marvin?