Bristol Energy Independent report ‘not a fair reflection’ on council
AN independent report that condemned how the city council made decisions about Bristol Energy was not a “fair reflection” of what happened behind closed doors, the deputy mayor insists.
Auditors Grant Thornton’s valuefor-money report, published in January, criticised the governance arrangements for the Bristol City Council-owned company as “inadequate” and said the Labour cabinet was not properly informed before it invested more money in the firm months before it failed.
But deputy mayor for finance, governance and performance, Cllr
Craig Cheney, says it is “impossible” for the auditors to know what was said during private discussions between himself, mayor Marvin Rees and the rest of the cabinet.
He also said he had to speak like a “salesman” about Bristol Energy in public while it was still running because the industry depended on confidence in such ventures.
The business lost up to £43.8 million of taxpayers’ money, with the final figure still being counted as administrators complete the process of winding up what remains of it in a members’ voluntary liquidation following its breakup and sale last year.
Speaking to The Cable’s Bristol Unpacked podcast, Cllr Cheney, the authority’s shareholder representative at parent company Bristol
Holding meetings, said: “All that Grant Thornton have access to are the public meetings.
“What they don’t have access to are the conversations that me and Marvin and the cabinet may have in private session. So it’s impossible for them to know, really.”
He said the external auditors’ report included lessons about how those exempt meetings should have been recorded in minutes so there was a paper trail of decisions.
“Some of that stuff we’ve taken forward, but I don’t think that was necessarily a fair reflection,” Cllr Cheney said. “What that really meant was that ‘in the public cabinet meeting when you discussed it, you didn’t explain x, y and z.’
“But what they did point out was that because public meetings were exempt, they were not able to see them and we hadn’t minuted those meetings.
“So some of that stuff was mentioned in the publicly exempt meetings because we are very thorough and we have a legal team that goes through these things in advance.”
Grant Thornton’s report, which covers Bristol Energy’s last full financial year of trading in 2019/20, said information the cabinet received from the shareholder group was “inadequate”, “did not clearly state the risks”, and was “out of date”. It said the business plan was “unrealistic” and the council’s audit committee should have had “closer involvement” with the issues.
Asked by Bristol Unpacked host
Neil Maggs if he accepted that what was being fed back to cabinet did not paint a grim enough picture of the company’s prospects, Cllr Cheney said: “No, I don’t think so.
“The problem is when you’re in a business like the energy business, the public face of it has to be positive. You’re a salesman whenever you stand up and talk on behalf of the company. We had a few bad reports by a few other people in the council leaking details and suddenly the creditors for the company disappeared.
“So you have to walk a very difficult tightrope of trying to be as transparent as you possibly can while also making sure that while you’re in public you’re not doing things that actually make the position worse.”