On Friday we published a report on the prospects for an elected mayor in Bristol. It is the first report from the Bristol Civic Leadership Project. The prospects report was based primarily on views collected from around Bristol prior to the mayoral election in November. It drew on the respondents to the Citizens’ Panel, a survey of civic leaders, and workshop discussions with stakeholders. The aim of the report was to set out a baseline of information on people’s expectations for the arrival of mayoral governance and, where possible, on the back of that evidence to draw some lessons about avoiding pitfalls associated with changing governance. It aimed to do no more nor less than that.

The broad message of the report is that many people were not hugely positive about the performance of the city council under the Leader and Cabinet governance model used prior to the move to an elected mayor. Many were therefore positive about the prospects of the move to a mayor – they were expecting the governance change to have a positive impact on the governance of the city and on the city itself.

The main group who took a different stance were city councillors. Councillors tended to be more likely to be positive about the (then) existing model, and correspondingly more sceptical about the benefits of the arrival of an elected mayor.

I noticed that there was a bit of negative comment about this report on Twitter on Saturday. I thought it would be worth reflecting on some of that comment. Continue Reading →