Rees: ‘If we’re not careful, the city will outgrow the City Council’

Unelected officials appointed to Marvin Rees’ City Office boards are better at running Bristol than elected councillors prone to “bun-fights”.

That is the message from the mayor, who fears that Bristol could “outgrow” the city council because of its dysfunction and lack of action.

Rees says the local authority is in danger of becoming an irrelevance as it is slow to get things done and dogged by political division, and there is a “gulf of difference” with his City Office, which links up leaders of local institutions such as the police, hospitals and universities.

But opposition leaders say Rees cannot take scrutiny or criticism, which he is subject to only from elected politicians at City Hall exercising their democratic duty to residents.

Opening Bristol City Council’s annual budget debate, the mayor said: “We must remember what we’re here for: to deliver, to get things done, not just to maintain our own internal cogs, bells and whistles.

“I see a flurry of additional meetings being called at the moment – two extraordinary full council meetings, four call-ins, extra HR committees – which I fear is more about using the internal processes to clog things up and make noise that may or may not win a headline than it is about securing delivery for Bristol.

“The city needs and deserves more from all of us elected in Bristol, with a ferocious focus on getting things done.”

He said it was the last budget before May’s local elections so there would be an “attempt to do the usual council bun-fights” but that they should be concentrating instead on crises facing the city, such as Covid-19 and the climate emergency.

“That’s where we, as people elected to lead in Bristol, will be at our most useful in seeing, defining, understanding and directing our energies towards these challenges, rather than small swipes that may or may not win temporary if superficial headlines.”

The meeting lasted for more than four hours. Image: Bristol City Council

But before an opposition councillor had spoken, the ruling Labour group leader councillor Marg Hickman “set the tone”, according to her Conservative counterpart councillor Mark Weston, with a pre-emptive strike, saying the other parties’ members would “undoubtedly invent much to grumble about today”.

She told Tuesday’s four-and-a-half hour full council meeting: “Today’s amendments are likely to see opposition members chuntering from the sidelines while we’re busy building affordable homes, improving the lives of the worst off, decarbonising our transport and heating systems and helping to create opportunity throughout the city.

“While Marvin has been showing leadership in an unprecedentedly difficult time, the opposition has continued to be irrationally irate about previous budgets.”

Weston said: “I fear that probably sets the tone for the rest of the day and I always marvel at the mayor’s ability to deliver a massive swipe at those that try to hold him to account.

“Somehow trying to imply that holding you to account and scrutinising your actions is wrong, undemocratic and might actually endanger lives due to the pandemic is just lunacy.”

He said the Tories had “deep concerns” about the mayor’s budget and that it was their job to hold him to account.

“So, rather than behave in a sullen manner when we try to do it, maybe acknowledge there are problems with your administration and your budget, and they can be remedied,” Weston said.

Gary Hopkins criticised Rees’ administration for the number of houses built. Photo: Bristol City Council

Lib Dem group leader, Gary Hopkins, said Rees had failed to deliver on his pledge to build 2,000 homes a year, 800 of them affordable, by 2020.

He said that before the directly elected mayoral system was introduced in Bristol in 2012, the council enjoyed productive partnerships with all other West of England authorities on regional transport issues but that “now we have a war with neighbours and isolationism”.

Hopkins said: “We had funded and opened new swimming pools and sports facilities – now we have a closure agenda.”

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Labour deputy mayor, Asher Craig, meanwhile, branded a Lib Dem budget amendment “cynical, desperate and opportunistic”.

Green group leader, Eleanor Combley, said she was not “violently opposed” to the mayor’s budget but could not vote for it because it was “lacking in ambition and vision”.

She said: “After five years pushing for action, we cannot afford to keep kicking the can down  the road on the climate emergency and hoping big companies will step in to save us.

“We cannot afford to miss out on millions of pounds for new council housing and we cannot afford to keep neglecting our parks and local neighbourhoods or throw millions at big developments without proper scrutiny of where the money is going.”

Lib Dem councillor Tim Kent said: “I would say to the ruling group sometimes it can be difficult when you’re in power – arrogance can go to your head.

“We’ve been there, we know what it’s like, and sometimes other people do have ideas, they’re worth listening to, it does no harm to sometimes adopt those.”

All six opposition budget amendments were voted down, however.

Despite bringing boxing to City Hall, Bristol mayor Marvin Rees is not keen to see sparring in the council chamber – photo: Martin Booth

Responding to the criticism, Rees said: “To be honest much of what we’ve just experienced is what we anticipated.

“The hyperbolic of a description of a threat to democracy… I actually have friends who fled to live in this country and friends overseas right now fighting for democracy. To raise that argument here is just silly.

“We need a reality check on ourselves and a bit of humility that there was no halcyon day in Bristol City Council’s history when we were pumping out delivery.

“There is a gulf of difference between the quality of conversation and lack of action orientation we have here and that which we have in the City Office.”

Rees said working with partners through the City Office, it took just a few weeks to arrange for 3,000 laptops to be donated to people facing digital exclusion.

“It’s identify a problem, take action,” the mayor said. “If only in this chamber when we get together as elected politicians we had the same kind of commitment to identifying the challenges we face as a city and putting in place real world action to tackle those problems, the city would be a lot better off.

“If we’re not careful, the city will outgrow this authority. We really need to make sure we are action-oriented, not swipe-oriented.”

Adam Postans is a local democracy reporter for Bristol

Main photo: Bristol24/7

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