Marvin Rees

Marvin Rees (born April 1972) is a British Labour Party politician serving as Mayor of Bristol since 2016.

Marvin Rees was brought up in Bristol, partly in Lawrence Weston and Easton, by his British mother.

He attended St George comprehensive school in Bristol and later obtained a master's degree in political theory and government at Swansea University, and a master's degree in global economic development at Eastern University in 2000.

Later he completed the World Fellows Program at Yale University.

During a fellowship he assisted Tony Campolo, an advisor to President Bill Clinton.

Rees has worked in diverse areas throughout his career.

He was a freelance journalist and radio presenter at BBC Radio Bristol and Ujima Radio.

He was the Communications and Events Manager at Black Development Agency (now Phoenix Social Enterprise), an agency devoted to empowering individuals and communities through opportunities to work abroad.

Rees was employed in the city of Bristol as the programme manager for race equality in mental health issues at Public Health, Bristol.

He worked in the United States as an outreach assistant at the Sojourners Community and as a youth coordinator at Tearfund.

In 2012, selected by an individual ballot of Labour Party members in the city to stand for Mayor of Bristol, Rees defeated four other candidates for the nomination, including the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Bristol City Council Labour group and a former Member of Parliament, Dan Norris, who would later become Mayor of the West of England.

At the election, he received 25,906 votes, coming second, after George Ferguson, an independent.

Rees found it difficult readjusting to normal life following his election loss.

In 2012, Rees was the founder and programme leader at the Bristol Leadership Programme, a two-week programme helping a dozen people annually from impoverished backgrounds to attain their aspirations.

He was also a member of the Bristol Legacy Commission which dispersed its funds and ceased operating in April 2012.

He is a former director of the Bristol Partnership whose goals are to make Bristol's prosperity sustainable, reduce health and wealth inequality, build stronger and safer communities, and raise the aspirations and achievements of young people and families.

Rees was again selected to be the Labour candidate for the 2016 mayoral election, easily defeating a sitting Labour councillor in the selection.

On 5 May 2016, he was elected Mayor of Bristol.

He received 56,729 votes in the first round and 12,021 transfer votes in the second round, giving him 68,750 votes overall.

He has been referred to as “the first black mayor of African descent” in the UK.

In August 2016, Rees instigated a voluntary severance programme aimed at reducing the size of the council's workforce from 6,970 by 1,000.

Rees commissioned an independent report by former Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred, which criticised senior council officers, leading Rees to say a culture of concealment had previously prevailed so councillors were unaware that agreed savings had not been fully delivered.

From 2016/17 to 2019/20 the outcome was between 1,350 and 1,994 new homes per year, of which between only 188 and 312 per year were affordable.

One matter that split public opinion was Rees's decision in September 2018 not to build the long-awaited 10,000 seat Bristol Arena by Temple Meads railway station, in the centre of Bristol.

The episode brought discussion about the authority of a city mayor to make autonomous decisions in the face of opposition.

Concerns were raised at how businesses are able to influence those with decision-making and planning powers in cities.

The main reasons Rees gave for his decision were building cost, financial risk, and job creation.

The building cost for the council, which would have had to be borrowed, had increased to £150 million, plus half of any cost overruns.

Costs arising should the arena not be successful would fall on the council, and expert advice was that the venue size was too small for major events.

Rees also argued that a mixed use development would create more and better-paid jobs.

The decision was also heavily influenced by an agreement to secure a 17,000-seat arena in the north of the city, built with private investment at no public cost.

In March 2019, Rees vetoed the installation of a second plaque to the statue of the Bristol-born merchant Edward Colston as he rejected the proposed wording as failing to adequately describe Colston's role in the Bristol slave trade.

Rees's term of office started with a £30 million budget shortfall inherited from the previous administration and a £60 million budget deficit from government funding reductions to 2020.

Rees had pledged to gradually increase home building in Bristol toward a 2020 target of 2,000 per year, of which 800 would be affordable.

Rees oversaw the founding of a city-owned housing company, Goram Homes, created to develop and build homes, re-investing profits to the development of affordable and social housing.

The affordable homes target for 2020/21 was reduced to 500 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Affordable homes had mostly been built on brownfield land.

The council housing manager stated the missed target was delay rather than failure, with at least 1,028 affordable homes expected from current projects in 2022/23.

In the 2020 and 2021 Powerlists, Rees was listed in the Top 100 of the most influential people in the UK of African/African-Caribbean descent.

In the aftermath in 2020 of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, in police custody, global Black Lives Matter protests were held around the world.