Emails of former Bristol mayor Marvin Rees deleted

Some of the information is still held by the authority but the ex-mayor's account has been wiped

Former mayor Marvin Rees’s official emails and inbox have been deleted, it has been revealed. But some of the information and exchanges from his eight years in office are still available to the public if they submit a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, a full council meeting of Bristol City Council was told.

In a confusing reply to questions by local democracy activist Suzanne Audrey on Tuesday, October 8, the authority’s leader Cllr Tony Dyer (Green, Southville) and its top legal officer Tim O’Gara said council policy was that email accounts were wiped 30 days after members or staff left. They said this was because emails were not the organisation’s recognised storage system but that they were held elsewhere and would be available to share if they were not exempt from publication, such as confidentiality or commercial sensitivity.

Ms Audrey told councillors: “In response to a recent FOI request about meetings the ex-mayor Marvin Rees held in March 2024, the response from Bristol City Council was ‘The information you requested is not held by Bristol City Council. The mayor's inbox and communications were shut down upon him leaving office’.” She said: “It should be possible to make an FOI request about meetings and decisions involving the recent elected mayor and to gain a response.

“I hope the leader of Bristol council and relevant officers will look into this and ensure that information is available for those who make relevant FOI requests. What is the Bristol City Council retention policy relating to emails, minutes, papers, etc, for officers and members in senior positions?

“In relation to the mayor’s inbox and communications, does ‘shut down’ mean that the data has been completely destroyed, or is it stored and accessible somewhere? If the data – ex-mayor Marvin Rees's inbox and communications – has not been completely destroyed, what provision is in place to access it for the purpose of responding to FOI requests?”

Cllr Dyer, who became council leader following May’s local elections when the mayoral model was scrapped and replaced by a committee system where cross-party groups of councillors make policy decisions, replied: “The council’s document retention policy applies to all officers and members irrespective of seniority and follows Local Government Association best practice. In line with the council’s email retention policy, the inbox was deleted after 30 days.

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“Email is not our recognised storage system. Documents will be kept in their line of business system.

“The normal FOI process will accommodate requests for information still held provided it is suitable for disclosure, ie, not exempt.” Ms Audrey said she did not understand the reply and asked whether the information relating to important decisions for the city during Mr Rees’s tenure was still stored somewhere that could be accessed via an FOI request or if it had completely disappeared.

Monitoring officer and director of legal services Mr O’Gara said: “The mayor’s inbox will have been deleted in accordance with that retention schedule over the course of the summer. Email is not our recognised storage facility and we have other document retention case management systems and the like where relevant materials and information that officers and councillors have worked on over a number of years that’s held in those systems would of course be searched in line with any information request that we receive.

“Just to be clear, if we hold information that relates to the former directly elected mayor and it’s held in any of our other information storage systems and we receive a Freedom of Information request that relates to that information then we will go through the usual process of considering whether it should be disclosed or whether it is exempt from disclosure in line with our information policies.”

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