Your say / Politics
How mowing a meadow exposed confusions of committee system
When some men went to mow, went to mow a meadow, they had no idea that they would be setting in motion a chain reaction that would reach the highest echelons of City Hall.
Before the local elections in May, there was one man many people liked to blame if anything went wrong in Bristol: Marvin Rees, the directly elected mayor.
The buck stopped with the mayor – which Rees was keen to stress – and this direct accountability was seen as one of the mayoral model’s many advantages.
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But a citywide referendum got rid of a mayor in what was as much a stinging rebuke to Rees as it was a decision to change Bristol’s system of local governance.
We now have a committee system made up of eight policy committees which councillors from all parties sit on, as well as a council leader who is chosen by councillors.
So who is to blame when a meadow on the slopes between Knowle West and Bedminster, which has been carefully cultivated by the local community, is almost completely destroyed?
Well, the Greens have blamed Labour. Labour have blamed the Greens. And the Lib Dems have accused Labour of “acting like babies”.
And to paraphrase Barry Davies at the 1988 Seoul Olympics: where, oh where were the Tories? And frankly, who cares?
The tit for tat began with this tweet:
Within that Bristol24/7 story, Green Party activist Danica Priest asks: “Why didn’t the Labour councillors stop this? This is your job.”
The councillors Priest was referring to were Lisa Durston and Rob Logan, Labour’s two elected representatives in the ward known as Filwood, who said that they were both “devastated to see these wildflowers needlessly cut down”.
In a joint statement, they added: “The Green Party run the council in Bristol. They really need to be on top of this.
“Their council leader and committee chairs are able to instruct officers to stop things like this. They’re in charge now. No more excuses.”
(In another twist to the tale, Logan is Labour’s general election candidate in Thornbury & Yate and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he could become an MP in the early hours of July 5, which would prompt a by-election for the seat he would have held for just 63 days.)
I understand that despite the council being told about the wildflowers that had been planted here on the edge of the Northern Slopes, it was contractors who did the damage.
Novers Hill meadow sits between Knowle West and Bedminster – photo: Martin Booth
Martin Fodor, the Green chair of the environment & sustainability committee, which is yet to have its first meeting, told Bristol24/7: “It appears that the council were unaware of the existence of the wildflower meadow that had been planted here by the community and therefore had not looked to adjust their mowing schedule if necessary.
“Clearly, we need to improve communication between council staff, contractors and the community where there are different initiatives underway.
“This is something that I will be working hard to improve.”
“I encourage all members of the public to attend our policy committees to ask questions of the officers themselves, and to bring forward ideas on what the council can do to improve this line of communication.”
Fodor’s statement was much more measured than a tweet from his fellow Green councillor David Wilcox, who wrote that “Bristol Labour hasn’t realised that the world has changed around them and is still acting like the council is run by a mayor and cabinet when it’s actually run by a committee for which we all have responsibility”.
To reiterate his point, Wilcox then tweeted the job description from the council’s constitution for a policy committee vice chair.
But the confusion deepens, because while former Labour cabinet member Ellie King is the vice chair of the environment & sustainability committee, it is a Lib Dem, Stephen Williams, who is the chair of the public health & communities committee which has responsibility for parks and green spaces; with a Labour vice-chair, Emily Clarke.
Green group leader in City Hall, Emma Edwards, said: “It should be clear to Bristol Labour that the Lib Dems have the chair and they have the vice-chair of the relevant committee. They also sat on the working group that designed the committee system.”
Some of the meadow was not mown, with council contractors to blame for the rest of the meadow’s destruction – photo: Martin Booth
As if that wasn’t enough confusion, here is a conversation on X between Emily Clarke, the aforementioned vice-chair of the public health & communities committee, and Lib Dem councillor and former Lib Dem mayoral candidate, Caroline Gooch.
It started with Gooch replying to the tweet from Bristol Labour embedded higher up in this story.
Gooch: “You have vice chair of public health and communities, responsible for parks. Therefore you are in the administration. Apart from the fact that you set the mowing schedule and all we are getting at the moment is reports and no committees have been able to reset anything yet.”
Clarke: “Perhaps I could be invited to the monthly cabinet meetings then ?”
Gooch: “There is no cabinet.”
Gooch: “If you wanted to go to the fortnightly leaders and chairs meetings, maybe Labour should have take up the policy chairs it was entitled to instead of acting like babies and throwing your toys out of the pram because you aren’t the biggest party.”
So that’s sorted then. Greens, Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories are all in the administration under the makeup of the committee system.
Except Labour have also taken to using the pejorative term “coalition” to describe the current goings-on inside City Hall, despite being offered chair roles on committees – due to the number of seats they gained at the local election in May – but refusing to take them.
We don’t know how many men went to mow the meadow on Novers Hill.
But what we do know is that at City Hall, there are eight policy committees which between them will hopefully stop something like this from happening again. So long as the apparatchiks at City Hall can work out which committee is responsible for what.
Our elected representatives need to stop bickering and buck-passing, and start working together for the good of Bristol.
This is an opinion piece by Martin Booth, the Editor of Bristol24/7
Main photo: Martin Booth
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