‘Bristol needs to have a mayor – but not one who has two second jobs’

As chair of the Local Government Association’s city regions board, Marvin Rees should work between ten to 14 hours per week while also doing his job as mayor of Bristol.

This role pays him £17,500 a year on top of his annual salary of £79,468.

He also has a second extra income stream which is declared on his register of interests but one whose specifics have never been made public.

This is as a non-executive director at Plimsoll Productions, a company which has made shows including Britain’s Parking Hell, Tiny World and Women of 9/11.

Rees’ biography on the Plimsoll website says that he “successfully bid to bring Channel 4 to Bristol”, with Plimsoll often directly commissioned by Channel 4.

It’s a cosy arrangement and it’s highly unlikely that Rees would have been made a non-exec director if the people of Bristol had not voted him in as mayor.

But the people of Bristol deserve a mayor who is able to give their whole commitment to the job. Bristol’s mayor needs to fall in line with the West of England metro mayor, who is already unable to hold other paid employment.

This means no extra work chairing a board if it means taking up to 14 hours a week away from the demands of running a global city, and certainly no cushy non-exec directorships.

Any future mayor of Bristol should not be able to hold second jobs. The potential for conflict of interests is too high and we need a mayor who is able to pledge their full commitment to making our city a better place.

By all means, a former mayor should be able to take these boardroom positions once they have left City Hall.

But while taking home a salary of £79,468 (the average annual pay for full-time employees in the UK was £31,285 for the tax year ending April 5 2021) it is not easy to justify that they could do with the extra money.

The referendum in May to decide whether Bristol should retain the role of elected mayor should not be one to judge the merits of the two men who have previously been voted in for the job, with Rees already in his final term of office.

It is going to be very difficult, however, to look at the undoubted benefits of the role without looking at the successes and failures of the men who have done the job so far.

Could George Ferguson and Marvin Rees go down in history as Bristol’s only two elected mayors? – photo: Bristol24/7

I believe that Bristol needs an elected mayor if we want our city to prosper.

Recently on Twitter, I called Bristol’s councillors “anonymous” and quite rightly was criticised for using that term. They have a very important job and many are well-known within the communities that they represent.

What I should have said was that, on the whole, our councillors are “faceless”.

An elected mayor should provide accountability which the alternative model of governance for Bristol – committees made up of councillors – will not be able to achieve.

The Warwick Commission on elected mayors and city leadership said that “the four-year appointment of elected mayors does at least provide a rather more stable platform for ‘putting a face to the place’ and achieving significant – and sometime controversial – change through a council that might otherwise be difficult for council leaders wary of the fragility of their own political base”.

An elected mayor should be voted in to take controversial decisions. If we don’t like those decisions, we can vote them out.

But one controversy that our next elected mayor does not need is a second job.

Martin Booth is the Editor of Bristol24/7. His annual salary is £26,000.

Main photo: Willmott Dixon

Read more: Rees: ‘I’m not being harmed by what I do in my spare time’

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