Review to explore teething problems with new committee model at Bristol City Council

Almost half a year has passed since a major switch in how the city is governed

An upcoming review will explore teething problems with the new committee system of governance at Bristol City Council. Almost half a year has passed since the eight policy committees took control over a wide range of political decisions affecting everyone in the city.

But a number of issues have come up since they took over, sparking rows such as over who has power in the new system. Some policy committee meetings have been chaotic and confusing, with councillors learning as they go how the new system works.

A new committee model review group will take six months to explore all of these problems and suggest possible solutions. The group will form pending a vote by the full council on Tuesday, October 8.

The review group will explore: leadership, functions, roles and structure of the committees; policy development and task groups; report writing and options papers; briefings and agenda-setting procedures; public participation; local decision-making; budget-setting processes; and delegations to officers.

The group will be made up of three or four Green councillors, two or three Labour ones, one Liberal Democrat and one Conservative. They will meet in public monthly, and report back to the full council with recommendations in March next year, which could lead to the constitution changing. There have been a few recurring issues since the new system was introduced in May.

One is the obstacles to public participation. While the new committee model reveals the internal debates about policy that used to happen much more behind closed doors, members of the public have to attend public meetings in person — as the council does not record most meetings, apart from the strategy and resources policy committee.

A Labour councillor previously said supporters of the committee model should be “up in arms” at the fact that these meetings are not filmed and published online, given how the system was billed as more transparent than the mayoral model. Some meetings however are recorded by a member of the public, democracy activist Dan Ackroyd, and then uploaded to YouTube.

But under the mayoral model, all key decisions — including spending over £500,000 or affecting two or more wards in the city — were filmed by the council and made available to watch online. This no longer happens, due to a “resourcing issue”, preventing many people from observing how policy decisions are made that could have a massive impact on their lives.

Another issue is the “nodding-dog” nature of the new policy committees, as previously described by one back-bench councillor. In a few instances, staff have presented committees with options to choose from, but in effect one option has already been chosen and the others are unrealistic.

This problem came up during a meeting of the adult social care committee on September 2, when council bosses “strongly suggested” they renew a contract. Councillor Jos Clark, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, said choosing not to renew the contract would be “very difficult”.

She said: “I’m not sure we’re going to make a difference today. With this contract, the ship has sailed and we can’t really adjust it. If we vote against it, that would be very difficult for us to actually do anything. I’m kind of wondering what our purpose and function is.”

There is also an issue with the unequal balance of power within each policy committee. Chairs are paid much more than other members, are given more access to information, and can make policy decisions behind the scenes — like a controversial one recently on scrapping new council housing.

An example of this was when a relatively straightforward decision, on changing the type of gas the council buys to heat its buildings, sparked a row over access to information. The environment policy committee ended up taking a 25-minute break, on September 26, to thrash out a deal.

During the meeting, Labour Cllr Ellie King, vice-chair of the committee, said: “What’s the point of this committee if they’re not the ones making the substantive decision, the well-informed decision? These aren’t the only options that could come here. We need to be looking at the council’s estate and how to reduce our energy consumption.

“There’s a huge amount of work going on that needs to be brought to this committee so that they can understand that. We have buildings that aren’t being used at full capacity and they’re using huge amounts of energy. They’re not making a well-informed decision, because this information isn’t being brought to them.”

Amending policy decisions is another recurring problem — when council officers present an options paper to councillors, who then try to suggest changes. With raising allotment rents, this sparked claims of a “constitutional crisis”, after councillors were told they couldn’t make any amendments; while scrapping planned parking fee increases led to a huge gap in the budget.

The committee model of governance is rare in England but used in a few other councils, such as Sheffield, for example. Eight policy committees, made up of councillors from different parties, are responsible for taking decisions about how to solve some of the largest problems facing Bristol, from congestion and pollution to special needs education and care for the elderly.

Voters in Bristol decided in May 2022, in a city-wide referendum, to bring in the committee model, after widespread anger at the mayoral system where power was perceived to be too centralised. The committee model was then introduced in May this year following local elections, where Labour lost power and the Greens fell just short of an outright majority.

Six committees are chaired by the Greens and two by the Liberal Democrats. Labour chose not to take up the chair roles the party was entitled to.