Night of ‘chaos’ Anger as Greens take effective control of council

THE Green Party has effectively taken over full control of running Bristol City Council after an extraordinary meeting descended into ‘chaos’

- Tristan CORK

A loose coalition between the Greens, Lib Dems and Conservatives - which had been chairing the committees at City Hall - now appears to be over, and the Greens could now attempt to run the council on their own.

The drama of Thursday evening was sparked by the defection earlier this month of a Labour councillor who switched to join the Green Party. That means that the Greens now have 35 councillors - exactly half of the 70 who represent wards across Bristol at City Hall.

A committee system replaced the directly elected mayor last year, and for the past 18 months since the May 2024 elections, there has been agreement that has seen the committees run by a mix of councillors with Greens, Lib Dems and Conservatives sharing the chair positions.

That agreement now appears to be largely over. On Thursday, an extraordinary meeting of the full council was called and council chiefs proposed that the numbers of councillors on the committees should be increased by one.

Committees with seven councillors should be increased to eight and the key committees with nine councillors should be increased to ten. And the extra councillor on each one should be Green, so it would now exactly match the 50-50 split of the council overall.

With the Greens having exactly half the councillors on each committee, and the other parties sharing the other seats, there would be the obvious possibility of a 4-4 or 5-5 deadlock every time they have to take a vote.

But when that happens, the chair of each committee gets a second casting vote - effectively giving the Greens a 5-4 or 6-5 majority each time on all but two of the policy committees.

The change was proposed by senior council officers to better reflect the 50-50 balance of Greens and other parties.