Mystery surrounds how the £80m debt the Reverend Rees has run up refurbishing his cultural legacy project, the Bristol Beacon, is being funded.

Borrowing £80m, even at council rates would cost around £4m – £5m a year. Figures not cropping up in any financial projections published at the council.

That’s because the overpriced hall is being part-funded from this year’s capital underspend. Money that should have gone on other projects but didn’t. In October, Rees’s Cabinet approved “the reprofiling of this underspend of £68.8m from 2023/24 into future periods.”

Among the many budgets raided to fund this elitist concert hall are the schools budget (£5.9m); the SEND investment programme (£3.9m); Highways and Traffic infrastructure  (£4.2m); the housing delivery programme (£3.5m) and the Harbour’s operational infrastructure budget (£2.5m).

All stuff we, presumably, can do without now we’ve got an expensive concert hall?