Whose needs are considered in decision making?

When I tweeted about my post on citizen scrutiny, I wrote, “I look at how residents can scrutinise and are scrutinising power in Bristol. Is it futile? Sometimes.”

Almost immediately I wanted to correct that.

Citizen scrutiny is nearly always futile, if not actually always.

If you are a member of the public, you will rarely find a remedy when confronting even the lowest power of government. But of course, public participation is not meant to be just about confrontation. In a democracy, the public’s voice helps determine policy. The ability of policy to be guided by public needs and the voice of the people, is the only way we can be called a democracy.

What we have seen at Bristol City Council, however, is that even with a change in the form of government from executive-led to a committee system, having the public’s voice accepted, acknowledged, heard, published and considered in policy determination is nigh impossible.

However, there are some in society who do not feel this sense of futility.

Within hours of the new administration coming into power in May 2024, the Bristol Chamber of Commerce — Business West' — invited the council leader to their next gathering.

The email invitation was sent to Cllr Tony Dyer at Friday, May 10, 2024 2:04 PM for the meeting on June 16. Dyer was anointed leader on May 21.

Victoria Matthews, Members Account Director, said:

If you are available, we would be delighted to welcome you to speak to your ambitions for the city, key priorities as our new Green administration, and future plans – our business leaders would welcome any updates on how things might be running in the city moving forward and I assume by then we’ll have to Committee Chairs which will be great! We were thinking you could speak for around 10 mins to our members (you’d be most welcome to use slides or freestyle it) and then we could have 10 mins for Q&A if that work?

The council leader, Dyer, was indeed able to address a room of capitalists and he is even quoted as having said, “Politicians have a responsibility and duty to engage with business community”.

In his speech to Business West, Dyer said: “when we reach out for good ideas we should not be afraid to also look for those good ideas from our own citizens and communities across the city.”

Yet, the public have been excluded from public forum, blocked from Audit, spending data has not been published within legal time limits, and when I contacted the council Press team with some questions, I was ignored.

For some of us, the fight to be heard by power is futile. For others, they tell the council leader to give a speech, have a Q&A and even mingle over canapes, and he says, ‘How high?’

That’s worth remembering. There is a legal obligation to include the public in local authority decision making. Yet it is business that gets a personal audience while the public get fobbed off.