Bristol City Council

The council recently changed hands from Labour to Lib Dem but unless you’re really involved in the local politics scene it really is quite hard to tell what the difference is. It’s a unitary authority so it pretty much does everything from bin collections to libraries and roads to schools. Perhaps that’s why it can’t seem to manage doing a good job of any of it — spreading itself too thinly. The clangers have been not gritting any of the pavements during the horrendous winter weather, botching up the school selection process so loads of parents were left having to take their children miles and miles to school and finally sending out a load of ballot papers to people with the wrong constituency details on. Doh! On the plus side, the council office building on College Green is beautiful. A real iconic building, which would not be out of place in Washington DC.