Dozens of Bristol City Council officers are facing the axe with some having to reapply for roles that don’t yet exist at the West of England Combined Authority (Weca), sparking alarm from unions and opposition groups. It is understood up to 100 jobs could be cut in strategic transport and city design, with proposals branded “worrying” and “dangerous” set to come before cabinet next month.
The council says the Government’s 2016 devolution deal that set up Weca put the combined authority in charge of the region’s transport but that “Covid and other pressures delayed the transfer of those powers and functions” from City Hall. It is “now seeking to move this situation along to ensure these strategic functions sit in the right place”, having not done so in the six years since then despite persistent calls from transport campaigners and when it now faces a gigantic budget blackhole and needs to save millions of pounds.
But Bristol Live understands there will be no automatic transfer to Weca via TUPE employment regulations that protect pay and conditions, and everyone affected would be made redundant and have to apply for about 30 newly-created roles. The future of staff in the city design team is less certain and appears to be part of a wider restructure of the planning department, with no obvious place for them in Weca.
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Opposition councillors have expressed “grave concerns” while Unison says it is expecting “mass redundancies and major problems right across the council” from budget savings. Tory Cllr Richard Eddy said the scale of the changes in strategic transport, which oversees all major transport projects and policy in the city, would strip Bristol of the expertise and ability to design and deliver schemes, while Weca might not champion its priorities.
He said: “I appreciate that the Labour Mayor of Bristol has said ‘everything is on the table’ in the current round of budget savings, but these proposals look ill-considered and risk reducing Bristol City Council to the status of a parish-pump operation. If huge swathes of the functions contained in the strategic city transport team are transferred to Weca, the city council is likely to be relegated to little more than providing the core services of a statutory highways authority.
“I also fear that Bristolians’ transport priorities may not be Weca’s, so its policies could be imposed on us as if it was some sort of occupying power. There must be grave concerns that not every current experienced Bristol council officer will want to transfer to the dysfunctional Weca, where metro mayor Dan Norris has very publicly fallen out with each of the combined authority’s three council leaders. These plans look half-baked, risky and dangerous.”
Green Cllr Emma Edwards said: “We are very concerned about apparent proposals to cut skilled teams who provide important services that help to shape our future city.
“We call on the mayor to release the detailed proposals immediately, so the full impact and risks can be assessed by councillors. This is a worrying move from the mayor in his last 18 months in office – it could remove a strategic responsibility from the future committee system.
“Bristol urgently needs someone to take charge and promote sustainable and active travel – that would be better done locally than by the regional authority.” Unison Bristol branch secretary Tom Merchant said: "We have a set of principles where an outsourcing of staff is threatened.
"Firstly, as a rule, staff hate being transferred to third-party organisations. Secondly, in this case, the staff are really proud of the work they have done for the council and many of them feel this will end all they have worked for.
"If the members call on us to lead them into action, we will do so. What is less concerning is the involvement with Weca which is local government and has essentially the same terms and conditions as Bristol City Council.
“This still might not ease tensions so we will take our lead from our members. If a transfer is the only option there must not be interviews to apply for jobs, the TUPE regulations are quite clear that the job transfers across unmolested.
“That does not stop someone trying to restructure before or after the transfer and we would be strongly opposed to that. A public consultation has started with swingeing cuts ahead and there we are expecting mass redundancies.
“The transport consultation has a few weeks headstart on this but we are facing major problems right across the council." On strategic transport, a city council spokesperson said: “Weca receives funding for major sustainable strategic transport matters on behalf of the region such as the £540million City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement and also retains ultimate accountability for such spending and delivery of outcomes across the region.
“The authority to do so is contained in the legal order of Parliament created six years ago and that empowered the combined authority as the strategic transport authority. Covid and other pressures have delayed the transfer of those powers and functions but we are now seeking to move this situation along to ensure these strategic functions sit in the right place.
“This would leave the council to focus on its statutory duty as the highways authority and deliver the work we are legally mandated to do in this area. No decisions have been made on how to progress this work and further detail will be made available ahead of cabinet in December.”
On the city design and planning issue, they added: “Given the current financial challenge we face, we are carrying out the strategic plan we have had in place for several years to make the council a smaller, more efficient organisation, with a focus on developing people, places and partnerships to improve outcomes for our citizens. This work includes reviewing the work carried out across the council to ensure we avoid duplication and deliver the functions we must as a local authority.
“We are currently consulting on a range of proposals to help meet the potential £87.6million budget gap we face over the coming five years. We encourage all to get involved and share their views via this consultation which remains open until December 23.”
Mr Norris said: “The West of England Combined Authority is currently looking at structures across transport teams to make sure that they are set up to successfully deliver with the substantial amount of funding won from government. This will result in some new roles becoming available for transport specialists which will be advertised by the West of England Combined Authority in its role as transport authority.”
Under the devolution deal, while Weca is in charge of strategic transport, anything to do with roads, including where bus lanes go, remains the responsibility of the city council, which is not the case for other combined authorities who oversee both transport and highways.
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