No Greens on Bristol City Council Cabinet despite election success
Mayor Marvin Rees has previously said he does not trust the Greens enough to include them
Marvin Rees has not named a single member of the Green party on his City Council cabinet, despite the party holding the same number of seats as Labour, at 24.
The Labour Mayor announced the final member of his top team on Wednesday (26/05) with Tom Renhard given control of housing, while Marvin has given himself control of transport.
The other members, who are all from Labour, are as follows:
- Craig Cheney - Deputy Mayor and cabinet member for finance, governance and performance
- Asher Craig - Deputy Mayor and cabinet member for communities, equalities and public health
- Helen Holland - cabinet member with responsibility for adult social care
- Helen Godwin - cabinet member for families, education and women and lead member for children's services
- Nicola Beech - cabinet member for climate, ecology, waste and energy
It means Labour hold every position of power on the cabinet, despite the party only holding 24 out of 70 seats on the council as a whole; a clear minority.
After the local election at the start of this month, which saw the Greens improve their position from 11 seats to 24, taking 12 seats off Labour in the process and 13 new seats overall, many of their members called for more power on the council.
Their Mayoral candidate Sandy Hore-Ruthven, who lost to Marvin Rees in that vote, told us: "We should have a rainbow cabinet."
"It's something I pledged during my campaign and we absolutely should have a rainbow cabinet especially now that there is no overall control.
"We asked the Mayor to do that and we will see what his response is."
After the election Green group leader on the Council Paula O'Rouke also said her party should be included.
"What I would say to Marvin is, we have a lot to offer," she said.
"We have 24 councillors as I said, diverse in class and gender and ethnicity, who represent the city.
"I offer those talented people, and we ask him to let us in, to let us have real, proper influence in how the city moves forward."
Marvin however, has told us he does not currently trust the Greens enough, to include any of them in his inner circle.
"Being in the cabinet is about trust," he told us.
"These are, you're right on the inside of the decisions we make (if you're on the cabinet).
"There are many other ways to engage in leadership in the local authority through scrutiny, the various panels that make decisions that I don't control, licensing and planning and so forth, so there are lots of opportunities to lead.
"But being in cabinet is about human relationships and it takes time to build those."