We’ve just held our third city gathering as part of the City Office.

Almost 100 leaders from Bristol’s business, public and voluntary sectors came together to address the question of how we can run the city better. This is the challenge of the moment as we try to get better outcomes for people in the face of government imposed austerity that is taking away the resources we have to intervene.

I set out a number of challenges to the room of city leaders.  These included:

• There is no single organisation than can deliver for themselves or the city working alone,
• All organisations and sectors in Bristol are interdependent. For example: education is interdependent with health.  Health  is interdependent with business,
• We have lots of activity, some of it world class, but it’s not coordinated at a city level and that means we are missing out on additional impact that could be had if we were better coordinated.

We looked in some depth at how we can bring together both social action and social responsibility and it was particularly welcome to look at the potential impact of existing corporate social spend, if we can harness this for the good of the city.

The meeting was closed by our Youth Mayors discussing quality work experience, apprenticeships and the future of the city.

If you have an offer for the city, bring it to the City Office with an ask of what you want from us.