Register of waste, the Rees administration
Bristol City Council needs to cut millions from the budget, we are being told. We have had two days of scrutiny meetings looking at how the millions will go. We’re not much the wiser unfortunately.
What we have not done is take inventory of where millions went previously.
Let’s do that now. I can’t guarantee I will provide a comprehensive list below. There are many millions lost I know nothing about, which is a worry of its own. All I can do is provide a reference, a link, and a mention to the ones I do know about.
Feel free to update me.
Cllr Ellie King said in the first scrutiny meeting something along the lines of, I invite anyone to tell me where savings can be made. What a shame we have no time machine or personal accountability for wasted millions.
A brief register of money spent by this council:
£12m to cancel the arena
£12m revenue account spend on Arena cancellation. When the arena project was cancelled, the money could no longer be billed to the capital budget. The money came from the revenue account; the same one we are cutting by shutting libraries and parks.
£900,000 of the school budget to help an academy
Two years after St George Primary School was shut down, the building was handed over to Cathedral Schools. St George was shut down because it couldn’t meet its costs apparently. It was surprising, therefore to see Cathedral Schools be given £900,000 of the school budget, used for pupil places, to convert a school for their academy. That money is a lot more than St George ever owed.
£500k on developer bonus
To accelerate the provision of housing to meet the Mayor’s target (2,000 new homes – 1000 affordable – are built in Bristol each year by 2024) the council offered a £500k incentivisation agreement (pdf), which was not part of the build contract, to Willmott Partnership Homes Limited (Midlands and the North). See FOI for details of the contract.
£110,000 on Impact Social - Twitter spying
In 2018, in the midst of millions in cuts to the council’s budget, the mayor agreed to cut £90k from school crossing guards. At the same time, he agreed to pay £90k for a company to spy on Twitter. This company reported monthly directly to him, to keep him updated about what people were saying about him specifically.
£5000 on Christmas message
The mayor’s political party, as is their right, spent £32k on advertising with Reach, owners of the Bristol Post, so the mayor would only be mentioned in the paper in the advertorials. Around the same time, the Rees regime spent £5000 on a Christmas message in the paper. The previous year, he had posted it on his blog and the paper had printed it for free.
£7000 on political analysis for Rees
There is a yearly sum of £7000 paid for political analysis by DeHavilland paid for from the mayor’s office. I have yet to see what this money pays for.
£272,000 a year on Colin Molton
Colin Molton was the interim executive director of growth and regeneration even after the council had hired a permanent exec director. The public paid him £1500 a day for a four day week. He also charged a 900 Euro taxi ride to the public as well.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-city-councils-arena-lead-1673010
£239,000 a year on Arena Consultant Nigel Greenhalgh
Nigel Greenhalgh was paid £239,000 a year to cancel the public arena project at Temple Island. He wrote the report that recommended the land and some future project be given to L&G.
£1.2m Bristol Energy ‘consultancy’ costs
The City Leap project had a budget of over £8m for procurement. £1.2m of this money went to Bristol Energy for ‘consultancy’ services. The contract has a blank page where the services were to be listed. At the time, Bristol Energy was failing as an energy company — the mayoral election was due to take place five months later.
£9000 a year on the mayor’s state of the city address
Each year, the mayor gives a state of the city address at Wills Memorial building. It costs the public £9000. If he gave it in City Hall it would not.
Pay rises for the mayor and cabinet members and deputy mayors
During the pandemic, and with the mayoral election delayed, the mayor approved pay rises for himself, his cabinet and his deputy mayors. The pay rise costs £180k extra a year. It was criticised by Massive Attack too for not leading by example.
£30,000 pay rise to the mayor’s assistant, from £65,000 to £95,000
£200,000 payout to Nicola Yates
In 2016, the boss of Bristol City Council received a pay-off of £200,000 to leave her post- according to one of the city councillors.
£98,000 pay out to Anna Klonowski
The administration outsourced a legal opinion to justify the unlawful payout to the chief executive despite having a legal department of its own.
£43,000,000 lost to Bristol Energy
Cllr Craig Cheney, cabinet member for finance, did not tell cabinet that the independent shareholder advisor told him not to approve the business plan for Bristol Energy. The 2020 mayoral election was due to be held just five months later. Millions had to be poured into the company to keep it solvent.
£60m + overspend on Bristol Beacon
In August, it was reported that the council has now written off £69m refurbishing the historic concert hall.
The internet is not long enough to include all the spends of this council. I won’t mention £280k for the housing executive director but I will mention and remind you of the following:
The Rees administration paid £20,000 a MONTH to an arena consultant so he could cancel the arena. We then paid £12m for arena costs. And £32m to clean the site for L&G. And £2.5m to L&G (£1bn profit this year). And 40 YEARS guaranteed office rents.
These are big costs. Might some of them have saved libraries and parks?