The event is taking place just two days before the election
The four leading candidates in the West of England metro mayor election of May 1, 2025. l-r – Helen Godwin (Labour), Oli Henman (Lib Dem), Mary Page (Green) and Steve Smith (Conservative)(Image: Bristol Post )
A community group in Bristol is holding a hustings event for the West of England metro mayor election, but it’s not yet confirmed whether all the candidates have been invited.
The Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum has partnered with the community union Acorn Bristol to organise a metro mayor hustings on Tuesday, April 29.
The event will take place at the St Anne’s Board Mill Social Club in Redfield, between 7pm and 9pm that day.
Tickets are free for the event, but anyone wanting to attend has to RSVP to the organisers to get their name down.
The event is taking place in the heart of the controversial East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood, and is the de facto community hall for people in Redfield and Barton Hill – it was where the medical charity MedAct launched its report into the trauma suffered by residents of nearby Barton House.
The area has Bristol’s biggest Somali population, and it is understood a decision has not yet been taken on whether Reform UK candidate Arron Banks will be invited.
Mr Banks did not attend the first and biggest hustings event of the election so far – on the theme of transport and held at the Watershed. Organisers said they had sent an invitation to the Reform UK party locally before Mr Banks was announced as its candidate, and Mr Banks said that invitation had not been passed on by his own party to him.
Since he was chosen as Reform UK’s candidate, Mr Banks has doubled down on comments made in 2017 about Bristol being like ‘Little Somalia’, which prompted Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy to say he wouldn’t be welcome in the city.
READ MORE: ‘We have every right to be here’ Bristol’s Somalis tell Arron BanksREAD MORE: Reform’s Arron Banks defends calling Bristol ‘little Somalia’ — and has a go at Romanians
Earlier this month, he made unverifiable claims about crime rates and the Somali community, claiming Somali people in Bristol were ‘ten times more likely to commit serious crime’, which the Local Democracy Reporting Service in Bristol researched and found to be inaccurate. In the 2024-2025 year in Bristol, 0.7% of suspects in violence against the person, sexual offences, and robbery cases were Somali, and 1.36% of arrests were Somali. The Black African population in Bristol is 3.8%.
Leave campaigner Arron Banks
Some members of the Somali community in Barton Hill have said they would welcome Mr Banks to attend the hustings event, but Bristol Live understands the invitations to the candidates have not yet been sent out.
Fadumo Farah, from Barton House, said she was: “Looking forward to seeing all candidates, yes, even Arron Banks. Respect goes both ways.”