Blog

The councilors who designed how Bristol City Council will be run voted to set up seven policy committees.

After the next local elections in May, the council will transition from being led by a directly elected mayor to a series of committees.

A working group of council members chose the number of committees at a meeting on March 31.

The details of what each committee will do have been left for council staff to consider in detail.

The seven committees would likely cover strategy and resources, children and education, economy and skills, environment and energy, health, care and well-being, homes and communities and transport, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Each committee would likely have nine seats, distributed evenly among political parties to reflect the broader political balance on the council, and could meet eight to ten times a year.

In addition to the seven policy committees, several regulatory committees would continue to operate in a similar way to how they currently do.

These would cover development control, licensing, human resources, public rights-of-way, and public safety.

Labor councilor Marley Bennett said: “You want these committees to have a broad enough focus that they can look at issues thematically.

“My concern is that if we go with the cabinet portfolio-based proposal, it would end up with too many committees, so councilors would have too many meetings and that would detract from the quality of input into policy development.”

Green Councilor Heather Mack added: “Corporate themes are adapting and changing based on what we judge to be the needs of the city.

“And they will change, so I think the committees should change. I also think they will change as the political makeup of the council changes because different political values ​​will have different ideas about the issues.”