Barton House was evacuated<\/a> in 2023. Before the local elections, the Greens promised to hold an inquiry into the evacuation of the council tower block, but that still hasn\u2019t happened yet, more than a year since the party largely took control of the council.<\/p>\nDan Ackroyd, a democracy campaigner, said: \u201cAlthough retention of decision-making records is one aspect of why emails need to be kept, another aspect is to be able to hold inquiries, such as what events happened in exactly what sequence during an emergency. Will the emails in the week leading up to the Barton House evacuation be available to the inquiry?<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t you realise how bad this is making you look, both yourself as council leader and the reputation of the council? There was a Green Party pledge of holding an inquiry into why the Barton House evacuation was so shambolic. I cannot see how this inquiry can be held if the emails have been deleted. This is indefensible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the local elections, the Greens also promised to give Barton House tenants priority in rehousing them elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Many of the hundreds of people living there are traumatised by the evacuation, with one girl recently begging councillors to help her family move. This hasn\u2019t happened yet either. The council leader said he was unable to answer questions on a potential inquiry.<\/p>\n
Cllr Dyer said: \u201cAt the moment until we see how that\u2019s going to be taking place, I can\u2019t answer that question because that will be up to whatever investigation is undertaken. It\u2019s not up to me to pre-empt the terms of that investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cDepending on what the inquiry decides they need to be able to see, then if we have it available we will make it available. But I don\u2019t know what\u2019s available and what\u2019s not available. Next time I\u2019ll make up an answer for you \u2014 that will probably be more satisfactory.\u201d<\/p>\n
A new policy being drawn up will automatically delete emails sent by staff after two years, and after four years for councillors.<\/p>\n
At the moment, these aren\u2019t deleted automatically, but kept for the entire time the sender works or is elected to serve on the council. The reason is to save money, although it\u2019s unclear how much cash would be saved by not storing some emails.<\/p>\n
When somebody leaves the council, their emails are deleted after a month. In some exceptions, important emails could be stored for longer, although it\u2019s unclear who will make this decision. Councillors on the committee said now might not be the best time to start deleting emails, given the ongoing row over transparency and secrecy.<\/p>\n
Green Cllr Heather Mack, deputy leader of the council, said: \u201cThis is interesting because it\u2019s a report about concerns of how we are storing things, especially around email.<\/p>\n
“And it\u2019s been used to talk about a plan to retain emails for less time. It doesn\u2019t feel like an opportune time to be bringing this in, because the theme is how easy it is to access and be open with information.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been a political culture for a number of years of how transparent and open we wish to be, that I would like to change because I think that it creates more problems than it solves. I certainly would like to cultivate that culture of openness, and I hope that can spread in the council.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The council leader offered to ‘make up an answer’ to a member of the public asking about transparency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,3893,748,393,2584,4884,14144,10751,13072,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-117261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-bristol-city-council","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-fashion","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-green-party","15":"tag-local-elections","16":"tag-marvin-rees","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114540624883821084","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1_BR_PG_260124barton_house-141.jpg\")
It’s unclear if emails will be given to an inquiry into the Barton House evacuation(Image: PAUL GILLIS \/ Reach PLC)<\/p>\n