Residents can confront South Gloucestershire Council leaders at new area committees

Four new area committees where residents can tackle South Gloucestershire Council leaders and help shape policy are being introduced – after similar meetings under the existing set-up attracted an average of just four attendees. Householders, town and parish councillors, police, the voluntary sector and community groups will be invited to attend the sessions when the 18-month pilot project launches in May.

The expanded area committees will replace the 14 current ‘community engagement forums’ , which will be scrapped, where attendance has plummeted to next to nothing since the pandemic. Another problem has been that because there are so many CEFs, organisations like Avon & Somerset Constabulary have struggled to attend them.

A cabinet member from the council’s Lib Dem/Labour administration will chair each of the four committees, which will broadly mirror the new parliamentary constituencies and cover Thornbury West & Yate West; Thornbury East and Yate East; Filton and Bradley Stoke; and Bristol North East, North East Somerset and Hanham. They will not have decision-making powers but the local authority says they are a way of increasing its Community Conversations agenda to truly listen to the voices of the public.

The idea is that residents can speak directly to South Gloucestershire Council leaders so their views can be considered earlier in the process to determine policy and potential service changes. Opposition Conservative councillors welcomed the proposal, approved by cabinet on Monday, March 10, but questioned whether the committees’ areas were too big to focus on truly local issues.

Tory group leader Cllr Sam Bromiley said: “I’m absolutely not against a rethink in terms of community engagement considering how poorly CEFs have been attended. Indeed I had a horrific experience recently where I was the only one and I was subject to the council’s cost-of-living presentation to myself.

“So we do need a rethink here, absolutely. What evidence have we followed that’s led us to the area committees model and what would be the measure of success or what outcome would lead you to say this has been value for money?”

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Community development and partnerships service director Mark Pullin replied at the meeting: “Over the last few years we’ve done extensive consultation on the Community Conservation approach. We’ve looked very heavily at both the attendance at CEFs and feedback on their effectiveness.

“We’ve looked at models from other local authority areas across the country in developing these proposals.” He said measures of success would include hearing more diverse voices from communities at the meetings and assessing how people’s opinions were fed into council decisions.

Mr Pullin said: “Ultimately, however, it will be residents’ satisfaction levels and trust in their ability to influence decision-making of the council which will be a key criteria.” Shadow cabinet member for education, skills, employment and business Cllr Erica Williams (Conservative, Bitton & Oldland Common) said: “The size of the proposed committee areas could be problematic.

“The proposed ‘area three’ consists of 10 wards that collectively have a population size of more than 100,000 people. How can residents hope to get a focus on issues that matter to them when the area is so large?”

Mr Pullin said: “The area committees won’t operate in isolation. We will have an officer based in each of those geographies and they will be working closely with town and parish councils, the local councillors, and the voluntary and community sector, so they will bring in the voice of those communities.

“The geographies are quite big, but we hope to get that real local voice bubbling up through the area committees to help inform decision-making processes. We will also rotate the meeting venues around those areas.”

He said that because the 14 CEFs met four times a year, representatives such as the police struggled to commit to 56 meetings a year, whereas each of the four new committees would meet three times, totalling only 12 annually. Council leader Cllr Maggie Tyrrell (Lib Dem, Thornbury) said: “The thought that we might be overwhelmed with people visiting the committees would be a joy.

“I would be very happy if that happened and we might even then be able to divide them up further. But this is a pilot project, we will do our very best to make the agendas really interesting and relevant to the communities where they meet.

“It’s really important that people in those communities do come along and have their say.” Council co-leader Cllr Ian Boulton (Labour, Staple Hill & Mangotsfield) said: “These CEFs have been a bit of a blot on our diary for many of us who’ve attended, knowing that we’re the only ones there, so to have any opportunity to engage in a fuller way with residents and town and parish councils is really welcome. This has been a long time coming.”