Your say / Bristol Arena
‘Any decision Rees makes on Bristol Arena will be tainted in the eyes of the public’
I try always to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I have tried to take mayor Marvin Rees at his word when he claimed to be keeping an open mind over the location of Bristol’s Arena. This week’s revelations, however, don’t seem to leave any more room for doubt.
On March 21 2018, mayor Rees stated in his blog: “Let me be clear that the decision has not been made and we are building an evidence base to ensure that we are best positioned to make the right decision for Bristol.”
However, two days earlier someone (whose name has been redacted from the FOI request) introduces himself to a meeting on Transport for the Filton Arena as the person who “has been appointed by BCC to prepare a statement of support for the Brabazon Arena project proposed by YTL”.
is needed now More than ever
Why was the mayor paying someone to make the case for this option, while at the same time claiming not to be committed to it? If there is some advocate for Temple Island working away for balance, we haven’t seen any evidence of it, for example at the arena scrutiny meetings.
On April 26 2018, in a chain of emails between Bristol City Council and YTL, an email states: “We agreed that BCC would work with us on the sequential test… (which) will require the TQ (Temple Quarter) option to have been eliminated.”
This implies the council would be helping YTL to deal with the planning law which (recognising the value of city centre development) would rule out an arena at Filton while Temple Quarter still has a viable site.
Interestingly, in the mayor’s next blog on the arena on June 27 2018, he tries to shift the debate from talking about the arena location, and instead starts promoting alternative uses for Temple Island. If someone was looking for a way to eliminate the Temple Island option, taking the decision in September’s cabinet meeting to build something else on the site would certainly do the trick.
All the evidence suggests that while the mayor was telling the press, councillors and public that he would “make an unbiased decision with all the evidence”, he appears to be, behind the scenes, to be using taxpayers’ money to employ someone to lobby for a private concern, and essentially sabotaging the existing council arena project.
Taking this together with the hospitality he has received from YTL, I suspect that any decision the mayor makes now will be tainted in the eyes of the public, and I have real concerns about how exposed this could leave the council to legal challenges. I think we now have to ask if the mayor has a case to answer before the city council’s values and ethics committee.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really hope that the mayor is not predetermined, and is able to look at the evidence. I firmly believe that it should lead him to conclude, as did KPMG, 10 out of 11 members of the council’s scrutiny committee, and a clear majority of all councillors, that a Temple Island arena is deliverable, affordable, and the best option for the city.
Eleanor Combley is councillor for Bishopston & Ashley Down and leader of the Green group on Bristol City Council
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