Bristol’s new committee-run council should be more transparent and easier for the public to get involved, according to four focus groups. Some said asking questions at City Hall can currently be “intimidating”, with others suggesting that childcare could increase democratic participation.
From May next year, Bristol City Council will be run by several committees instead of a directly elected mayor, following a referendum last year. But the details of how the new committee system will work are still being thrashed out by a working group of 12 councillors.
The committee model working group faced questions on Friday, February 24, on how they are involving the public in their debates. The group also decided to do away with the current scrutiny system and replace it with a smaller panel to explore problems as they come up.
Read more: Questions facing group who will decide how city is run from next year
Four focus groups were held last November in Blaise High School, the Park centre in Knowle West, the Trinity Centre in Old Market, and the Rose Green Centre in Whitehall. More community engagement will happen later this year but details are still to be confirmed.
According to these focus groups, the council’s decision-making should be more transparent and less intimidating. Suggestions include providing childcare during public meetings, and holding meetings outside of City Hall and the city centre.
A report to the working group said: “Information about decisions should be easy to locate online, including how each one was made, the impact on local residents, and who was responsible. Some felt that formal meetings of the council were inaccessible both due to the location of City Hall and also the atmosphere, language and politics.
“The current option for residents to submit statements and questions to meetings at City Hall felt intimidating to some, and could be replaced by a more relaxed and creative forum. It was suggested that childcare could be provided for in-person meetings. Many residents would like to see the introduction of more local and devolved decision-making.
“A recurring theme across all events was that councillors should embrace cross-party working and focus more on the needs of their communities rather than party politics. The council should be clear about when the public were able to shape outcomes and avoid asking people to contribute in box-ticking engagement activities.”
The committee model working group is now meeting every month, with the public allowed to attend and put forward questions and statements. But the group was admonished for not exploring why people voted to scrap the mayoral system in the referendum last year.
Joanna Booth, a citizen journalist, said: “I’m not quite sure what the community engagement process is meant to do, because you haven’t really explored all of the city nor the range of opinions and why we got rid of the mayoral system. How are you planning to actually incorporate those voices, say from Stockwood where I went recently, to find out why they chose not to have a mayor any more?”
Green Councillor Jenny Bartle, chair of the working group, replied: “So far our community engagement has been targeted focus groups, because we wanted to do something as early as possible, but we didn’t really have the resources to go completely wide. That was why it was targeted and based on invite-only.
“But we know that’s not, like, the end, right? There is an email that anyone can email things into, and all of those emails we get are going to be considered by the group. We’ve also asked for a public pack so communities can run their own events and then give us the answers back.”
The working group was due to discuss the results of the four focus groups in its meeting in January, but this was deferred until the February meeting as they ran out of time. But most of the February meeting was spent discussing how scrutiny should work under the new system.
Three minutes before the end of the February meeting, Cllr Bartle said: “We haven’t actually finished. We do have one final thing, which is the community engagement feedback which we need to note. Is everyone happy to note it? Noted.”
After May next year, the current scrutiny commissions will likely be scrapped. These have the power to question council officers on controversial topics, such as the council-owned firms Goram Homes and the former Bristol Energy. Pending a vote by the full council, these commissions would be replaced by a scaled back “escalation panel” to explore key issues.
Labour Councillor Mark Bradshaw said: “There’s an escalation group that could lead to the full council. It’s a panel that’s appointed by the full council to deal with escalations. Alongside that are various tests of the level of support required to get to the panel and then to get to the full council.
“The boundary between decision-making and scrutiny in my view is redundant, given the changes that are going on. The policy committees need to own the whole process from this is the issue, this is the information, all the way through.
“But there’s a need for a way to deal with the cross-cutting stuff. There will undoubtedly be issues, like housing, which cross over more than one policy committee, so you need a way to deal with those in a proper and coordinated way.”
