Facts And Stats

Bristol is the 7th largest city in England outside of London and the economic capital of the South West.

The City Council administers an area of 110 square kilometres (42 square miles) and serves a resident population of 421,300 people (2008 estimate), while the city also serves the wider city region area – known as the West of England - with a population of nearly 1.1 million people.

This important relationship between the city and its surrounding sub-region has been recognised in the creation of a West of England Partnership with the neighbouring authorities of Bath and North East Somerset, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.

Bristol is home to over 17,500 businesses and is renowned for its excellence in knowledge-intensive and creative industries. More than a third of the UK owned FTSE 100 companies have a significant presence in the Bristol area. World class companies including Airbus in the UK, Rolls-Royce, Aardman Animations, BBC, Hewlett Packard, Toshiba Research Europe, Garrad Hassan and Orange have premises in the area

In 2006 Gross Value Added (GVA) per head in ‘Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and North Somerset’ (a ‘NUTS 2’ area which includes both Bristol and Swindon) was the most productive area in the South West region and the second most productive area in England (outside of London). The sub-region functions relatively well and is economically strong. It was 20% more productive than the region’s average, 8% more than the England average.

Bristol City Council became a unitary authority in 1996. It has 70 Councillors representing 35 wards; annual elections for a third of all councillors are held three years out of every four.

Bristol is a multi-ethnic city with a wide representation of Black and minority ethnic communities (11.9% ONS 2007 estimate) and diverse faith communities

Bristol City Council employs over 13,000 full time equivalent staff delivering more than 500 services. They are based in eight main departments. These are:

Children and Young People’s Services
City Development
Deputy Chief Executive
Health and Social Care
Neighbourhoods
Resources
Transformation

The Liberal Democrats took political control of the council in June 2009. With a break down of the 70 wards being Liberal Democrats 36, Conservatives 17, Labour 16, Green 1