A proposed delay to placing local decision-making at the heart of the way Bristol City Council runs after the mayoral system is scrapped next year has sparked “alarm”. Lib Dem Cllr Andrew Brown told a council meeting it would be a “tragedy” if communities and ward councillors were excluded from having their say on important matters affecting their areas.
And Knowle Community Cllr Gary Hopkins said that failing to devolve any decisions to local neighbourhoods would mean the authority had “missed a lot of the message the public gave us” when they voted in a referendum 12 months ago to abolish a directly elected mayor. The concerns were raised as full council unanimously approved the recommendations of the cross-party committee model working group, which has spent months thrashing out how the new set-up will work.
Members backed the idea of eight new policy-making committees, each chaired by a councillor with responsibility for their subject such as housing, transport and environment, as well as a council leader and deputy leader that will replace the current mayor and cabinet from May 2024. But Hengrove & Whitchurch Park ward Cllr Brown said he had some reservations following calls at the most recent working group meeting, to postpone decentralising power from City Hall to local areas until 2025 to ensure the new ways of working were properly up and running.
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He said at the meeting on Tuesday, May 9: “I was slightly alarmed to read comments in the media suggesting that local decision-making arrangements, which will be considered by the [committee model] committee and brought back to a future full council, might not be in place next year but will be left until some future date while the new system beds in. I’m not against the idea of a temporary delay if it allows for a better system to be introduced and properly managed but I’m worried that it might be used to kick the idea of local democracy and decision-making into the long grass.
“That would be a tragedy. One of the many reasons people gave for voting against the mayoral system was that they felt decisions were made too centrally and too remotely. Developing a new committee system allows us to design-in local decision-making from the outset, so I hope when we have the next paper come to full council we can consider the proposals for local decision-making and the timescales for these to be implemented.”
Cllr Hopkins said: “One of the things that has caused problems in this authority and with the public’s perception of this authority is over-centralisation where everything goes up the way, takes a long time and then eventually comes down.
"That is not the way to run an organisation. Obviously there are decisions which are strategic and need to be taken at that particular level, but we all know from experience how many things can be done better by discussion between local groups, local councillors and officers on the ground.”
He said that even before Bristol’s mayoral model was introduced in 2012, decision-making was centralised and that council officers were “frightened” to take responsibility themselves. Cllr Hopkins said: “Let me stress, I don’t think that the day after we move to the committee system that everything is going to be centralised and not everything that could be decentralised will be done straight away, because we have such an ossified system that it will take time to move it.
"But when we have our discussions it’s absolutely vital that the potential for localisation of decision-making and devolving to local councillors and local committees is fully taken into account because without that, we will have missed a lot of the message that the public gave us. They weren’t voting on party lines, they wanted to be involved in things, and the way you do that is discussing the things that matter to them in their area, listening to what they’re saying and taking those decisions locally.”
Working group chair Cllr Jenny Bartle (Green, Easton) said: “There are some big open questions still remaining about how certain aspects will be pinned down but this report recommends the things we have agreed. As chair I’m probably more aware than anyone of all the ideas I have on my list that aren’t yet ticked off but we are getting really clear answers to a lot of questions at good pace.
“Local decision-making will be discussed this month, so get your thinking hats on.” The group meets next in public on May 26.
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