The mayor of the West of England Combined Authority learnt the consequences yesterday of turning a deaf ear to the concerns of her audit committee when it failed to attract enough members to approve the authority’s accounts.
Just days earlier the mayor, Helen Godwin, and her three unitary leaders had agreed to oust the elected member chair in favour of a yet-to-be-chosen independent and rejected the audit and scrutiny committees’ support for the public’s right to ask follow-up questions in meetings.
The decisions by the mayor and the leaders from Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset (Banes) and South Gloucestershire were taken on the advice of officers who mapped out a revised constitution to take account of the authority’s growing powers and financial muscle.
In the tailwinds of that decision only eight members turned up at the authority’s Redcliff Street headquarters, too few to make any decisions legally valid.
Embarrassingly for the Labour mayor, two of her fellow party members in Bristol, Kelvin Blake and Tom Blenkinsop, failed to appear, as well as South Gloucestershire Conservative Ben Burton. Cllrs Blake and Burton also missed the meetings on September 28 and 14.
A Bristol Green, Sibusiso Tshabalala, sent apologies, as did an independent member, Jennifer Whitten.
Without a quorum, the committee was unable to receive and note the auditor’s report for the year ending March 2026 and approve the accounts for 2025-26.
At a sombre meeting, David Wilcox, the audit chair and Green councillor in Bristol, reported that on October 23 the committee of the mayor and other leaders approved the recommendations of the working group of officers on the revised constitution, which would lead to his replacement by an independent.
He asked the monitoring officer, Bob Brown, about the time and process of selecting a new chair of the committee. Brown said a report would come back to the committee in December.
Toby Simon, the vice-chair and a Liberal Democrat councillor in Banes, asked if there had been a debate about the audit committee’s views about keeping its political chair and welcoming supplementary questions.
Cllr Wilcox replied that there was some acknowledgement of the two committees’ opinions. “But it was dismissed in very short form. [Banes leader] Cllr [Kevin] Guy had to leave early, so everything was quite rushed,” he added.
In a discussion on the committee’s role, Cllr Wilcox said: “It approves the accounts and the combined authority cannot proceed without a set of approved accounts. So it’s very important that the audit committee is constituted formally and meets regularly and is quorate.”
Cllr Jonathan Hucker, a Conservative from Bristol, echoed the disappointment at the committee of leaders not taking on board audit’s recommendations. “I think it’s disgraceful,” he said.
He expressed doubts about the authority taking on the police and crime commissioner and the fire authority in future. “I don’t believe Weca is functioning as it should,” he said.
Nicholas Coombes, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Bristol, asked the chair to write to members. He said: “There are no consequences to a councillor not showing up to this meeting because it is an outside body and it’s not one that our voters ever get to interact with.
“Given there are no consequences for failure and clearly demonstrated contempt from the authority leadership, I can see why these members have not turned up today, although I am very annoyed with them for doing so.”
Mike Drew, a Liberal Democrat councillor from South Gloucestershire, asked what happened to the questions and statements made by the public to the committee. He said: “They seem to be addressed to us but we don’t seem to respond to them as a committee.”
He added: “I have no idea how valid these concerns are from these the members of the public. But it does seem that there is very little accountability anywhere in this organisation.”
Cllr Hucker criticised the failure of Stephen Peacock to attend audit. The chief executive has kept a low profile since having to explain a bungled recruitment process after he hired two former colleagues from Bristol city council on rates of £1,000 a day in 2024.
A report into the procurement failure has been promised for December.
Cllr Hucker said: “It’s poor that the chief executive of Weca hasn’t attended a meeting of the audit committee for many, many months. I think the statements that are made are important and should be heard at the highest level within the authority.
“I find it frustrating that we as a committee effectively seem powerless to act on concerns that are being raised before us.”
