Tag Archives: Executive Director of Growth and Regeneration

WASTED?

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bristol waste

What happened to Bristol Waste managing director Tony “I Am The” Lawless and his sidekick, finance director Adam “Dumb” Henshaw? Why did both suddenly quit on July 18 and disappear without working their notice?

The story goes that last March the rubbish bosses got their business plan signed off and approved by council boss Stephen “Preening” Peacock and the Reverend Rees. That business plan was based on holding a pretty strong line on pay in order to keep another of the council’s struggling businesses solvent. 

So, when the unions decided they needed a better pay rise they bypassed Bristol Waste altogether and went straight to the Reverend and his ex-union baron sideman “Slo” Kev Slocombe. The Reverend then instructed Bristol Waste (despite having no authority to do so) that they needed to make a better pay offer despite knowing full well they didn’t have the money. to pay for it.

Eventually Bristol Waste did make an improved offer. Not good enough to satisfy what the unions wanted but high enough to mean that it was double the amount of this year’s contract increase from the Reverend. Bristol Waste would now have to eat into their reserves and implement major cuts that formed no part of March’s business plan.

Soon after the pay hike announcement Lawless and Henshaw quit. Chris Holmes was quickly transferred over from Bristol Holding to take on the finance role, and a new interim MD was headhunted and appointed.

Last we heard Bristol Workplace (the recently outsourced cleaners and security from Bristol City Council) have already seen workloads substantially increased as the company attempts to deliver more for less. 

This month the new management will be launching a public consultation. Designed to be as boring as possible, one of its objectives will be to test out ideas that sound like they will be better for the environment but, in reality, will also save BWC lots of money. The preferred option being to go to three week rubbish collections rather than the two weeks currently in operation.

General word is that the Reverend doesn’t much care what the company does as long it doesn’t go bust before the end of his term in May 2024

ARENA ISLAND TROUGHING UPDATE

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Arena Island Bridge
A nice little corporate earner: the bridge to nowhere at Arena Island

Plans by Bristol City Council, cloaked in secrecy, to hand over the prime Arena Island site to pension fund L&G for free without an open market sale or procurement process continue.

The deal, cooked up by the council’s former £260k a year interim regeneration boss Colin “Headboy” Molton, who was officially characterised by the council’s own legal team last year as “incompetent”, finds the council guaranteeing rents for 40 years on a speculative office slab L&G intend to build on the site.

And there’s lots more public money to go around for privileged corporate sector players in on this public money giveaway. For instance, new council regeneration boss Stephen “Preening” Peacock has just signed off £420k to a corporate ‘strategic partner’ (Arcadis working with Arup and Mott MacDonald) “to provide project management, cost management and design services to maintain progress”.

Progress on what? Er, a further £32 million worth of “enabling works” on the site that the public are paying for before handing the site over to L&G.free of charge.

Nice work if you can get it!

NO LOOKING BEFORE WE LEAP

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Why were an unholy alliance of council bosses so keen to prevent a meeting of councillors scrutinising the fatcats’ confusing and secretive “Billion Pound” City Leap plan last week? Who do these clowns really work for?

City Leap is the latest senior officer brainchild to emerge out of Bristol City Council and they’re spending £10m of our money on it. The money’s being spent on procuring a multinational corporation as a ‘joint venture partner’ in, er, wait for it … An energy business!

This time the business is aimed at cashing in on ‘net zero’ by, among other things, building and running unregulated neighbourhood heat networks across the city to “‘up the pace’ in reaching carbon neutrality targets”,

Chief Exec Mike “Billie Jean” Jackson; Exec Director for Growth and Regeneration, Stephen “Preening” Peacock and Energy Services boss David “Payday” White all told councillors at a scrutiny meeting last week that there was absolutely no role for them in City Leap until their secretive high stakes procurement process was finished in February. 

The officers explained they would then generously allow councillors a couple of hours to rubberstamp their extraordinarily expensive done deal a few days before it goes to cabinet to get signed off by the Reverend, a Yale-trained corporate puppet.

The unscrupulous threesome explained that any attempt now at democratic scrutiny of this latest council energy scheme would have a ‘material impact on the procurement’.

Bizarre reasoning asserting that the council’s constitution and the right of councillors to scrutinise the executive like any normal functioning democracy should be suspended. On the basis that it might upset any multinational corporation lining up at the trough these officers are generously setting up for them.

All highly irregular. Surely any multinational that wants to work with Bristol City council needs to understand from the get-go that they’re working in a democratic environment where public scrutiny of their work is likely to be regular and detailed? And if they don’t like our democracy in Bristol? Well, they can fuck off to any of the many dictatorships around the world with their money can’t they?

Why are Bristol City Council bosses, whose jobs should directly involve upholding the constitution of Bristol City Council to the letter, creating an environment where the city’s democratic norms need to be ignored because corporate interests are waving some money around? Isn’t this exactly the time democratic scrutiny is needed?

A similar fiasco unfolded with Bristol Energy. Scrutiny and opposition councillors were persistently refused access to vital company information by officers. Councillors were unable to scrutinise what was going on at the company and the result was an estimated  £50m loss to council taxpayers.

Is it acceptable for officers to set up yet another energy business shrouded in secrecy that can repeat exactly the same mistakes all over again?

COMING SOON: What the fuck is City Leap anyway?

A LABOUR KINDA LOVE by Soapie Oprah

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A LABOUR KINDA LOVE

It’s quite the bromance isn’t it? Will the lovestruck Reverend Rees ever let his wannabe property speculator FRIEND WITH BENEFITS, city council Executive Director of Growth and Regeneration, Colin “Head Boy” Molton, go?

Stephen “Preening” Peacock, the replacement for the Reverend’s dubiously appointed CONSTITUTIONAL WRECK of a £1,500 a day council exec with a taste for £200 taxi trips on us, finally arrived at the Counts Louse on the 26 September. However, we were soon informed that Head (Lover) Boy would NOT BE WALKING OUT on the Reverend just yet and that the starry-eyed lovers could carry on sharing their public land giveaway fetish, romantic Cote D’Azure mini breaks and secret trysts on the third floor of the Council House for a while yet.

The latest excuse provided by a council PR for the NON-EXIT of Lover Boy and his ample wage demands is that “There will be a sensible period of handover between Colin and Stephen to ensure a smooth transition and to maintain momentum with major projects”. Although, the poorly briefed PR was UNABLE TO SAY when this bizarre ménage a trois might end. How much longer will we have to pay Lover Boy £1,500 a day for services rendered to the mayor? Days? Weeks? Months?

Rees’s new love interest, Peacock, will have to struggle along on a wage of just £165k a year and the GOOD NEWS is that he will also be subject to PAYE like his employees. The BAD NEWS is that Peacock’s another South West Regional Development Agency reject with a “huge amount of experience of economic development, major regeneration projects, technology and the energy sector”.

Doesn’t this sound dangerously similar to Lover Boy? Has the Reverend fallen head over heels for yet another naive career bureaucrat with a high opinion of himself who’ll get SHAGGED ABSOLUTELY SENSELESS when he falls prey to CORPORATE PROPERTY PIMPS with an eye for his assets?

Will there be more kiss ‘n’ tells to follow?