Report slams setting up of Bristol Energy

A MAJOR report into the city council’s Bristol Energy disaster has criticised the way the company was set up in 2015.

It also reveals the current administration under mayor Marvin Rees, which inherited the firm, considered but missed an opportunity to cut their losses two years later – a decision that would more than double the cost to taxpayers from £19.8million to as much as £43.8million now.

The report by external auditors Grant Thornton tells the “full picture” of Bristol Energy from its origins to the consequences of the authority’s decision to sell it in 2020, including the “planned and orderly” winding up.

It follows a damning previous report by the auditors in January examining events in 2019/20 leading to the sale which condemned the council’s “inadequate” decisionmaking arrangements and said the cabinet was not properly informed before investing extra money.

The latest findings say the original intention in 2015 was to set up an energy services company as well as an energy supply firm but that this idea seems to have vanished without trace.

The 22-page document makes three new recommendations, including the council telling the public the full cost of Bristol Energy. Opposition councillors say the report exposes “wishful thinking” in the authority ploughing increasing amounts of cash into the business.

But Bristol City Council insists it “provides further weight to our belief that Bristol should never have been operating in the commercial energy market” and that the Labour administration inherited a “company badly hamstrung by fundamental weaknesses in its foundation”.

Meanwhile Conservative Cllr Geoff Gollop, who was cabinet member for finance in former mayor George Ferguson’s cabinet which launched Bristol Energy six years ago, denied responsibility for the outcome of the company.