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Bristol: Your Neighbourhood – consultation on changes to local services

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Marvin Rees

Mayor of Bristol

Proposals for how Bristol City Council could deliver local services with a reduced budget. Libraries, public toilets, school crossing patrols, Neighbourhood Partnerships and Bristol Community Links are all covered in the proposals.

The proposed changes include reducing the number of city libraries to 10, closing street toilets and investing in a new community toilet scheme to expand availability, removing funding for around half of the city’s school crossing patrols, changing the current Neighbourhood Partnership model, and making detailed changes to the way a suite of services for adults with learning disabilities and dementia operate. Together the savings amount to just over £4.7m.

Savings on this scale will not be easy but unfortunately we have no choice but to make major savings following years of government austerity and the rising cost of providing vital services to more people.

At the same time we want to deliver on our priorities and make Bristol a more equal city where no-one is left behind. To do that we will work more closely with partners around the city to achieve our shared priorities and tackle Bristol’s biggest issues.

I’d like to encourage you to give your views on our initial proposals and ask you to share this information with other groups and communities you may have contact with. We will shortly share details of a series of community events which will form part of the consultation and to which you, your partners, service users and/or customers are warmly invited to attend.

For alternative formats or paper copies of the survey please email consultation@bristol.gov.uk or call 0117 922 2848, though please note these are costly and must be limited to people who really need them. The team can also supply a range of publicity material. A limited supply of paper copies will be available in libraries and the Citizen Service Point at 100 Temple Street by early next week at the latest.

I want to be clear that this is an open and inclusive consultation process to help us decide how best to deliver Full Council’s agreed budget savings. The feedback we receive from the surveys, along with the views of other local groups and partners and the results of our Equalities Impact Assessments, will be taken into consideration in developing a set of final proposals that will be put to me and my Cabinet to make a final decision. In making a decision Cabinet will also take consultation responses and Equalities Impact Assessments into consideration.

The consultations are open from 2pm at www.bristol.gov.uk/yourneighbourhood and run until Tuesday 5 September. At this link you will find all of the information, surveys and accessible signed and subtitled videos which you are welcome to share or embed on your own platforms.

Today will also see the launch of a consultation on savings proposed in our Supporting People budget. You can find more details about this at www.bristol.gov.uk/supportingpeople later this afternoon.

We are also running a series of eight public events are being held to help you take part in the conversation. The public events will be independently hosted and will include a question and answer session with the Mayor and Cabinet Members, followed by facilitated round table discussions that will consider topics such as how local people can become more involved in city life, suggestions for reducing council costs or raising money and which other organisations the council can work with.

Bookings can be made from 9am on Thursday 22 June on a first come, first served basis:

Anybody without internet access can book by calling the council’s consultation team on 0117 922 2848.