Democratic Services at Bristol City Council Continues Its Obfuscation

On Saturday 03 January 2026, I submitted three questions for the Full Council meeting on Tuesday 13 January 2026. The farcical incompetence it turns out to be is rather special, even by Bristol City Council’s standards.

Here is the original question as submitted.

On the day of the meeting, I received an email from Democratic Services saying they had ‘regrettably’ been unable to provide a response in the timescale.

A written response would be provided after the meeting.

The questions appeared in the Public Forum papers on the day like so.

As the days following the meeting dragged on, I emailed Democratic Services on the 19 January for an update.

I ended up Tweeting the council on 22 January for a response as I was still waiting for my answers.

And again the 26 January…

Later that day I received a response from Democratic Services pointing to a freshly uploaded Public Forum document.

The problem was, it failed to clearly state the number of weeks or months at the start of each line.

So on 27 January, I emailed asking for the question to be looked at because the number of weeks had been missed out.

And on 28 January, I received an answer saying that the published responses were the ones provided and that any further questions needed to be submitted to a future council meeting.

But I didn’t need to ask any further questions, I merely wanted clarity as to the numbers at the start of each line because it was not specific enough.

I received an answer from Democratic Service doubling down on the answer

I know it can be taxing for Bristol City Council to struggle to the end of a sentence, handle data or maintain accuracy. But, if you are not even answering the question as it was original asked, then at least put some effort into presenting the data you do put out with a bit more care and attention. Literally, answer the question please. It’s a wishy washy and lazy response at best. At worse, it’s the usual obfuscation of which Bristol is keenly aware of.

Guess work might be fine for Bristol City Council, but in the real world, people want properly specified or quantified answers. A bit like the Section F of EHCPs which is taking over a year to produce.

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