Labour councillor disqualified just 17 days after winning election

A woman elected as a councillor to Bristol City Council has been disqualified before she’s even attended her first meeting - because she’s a teacher who works at a council-run school. And that means there will have to be a by-election with voters going back to the polls just a few weeks after the election at the start of May.

Labour ’s Deborah Vittori said she is ‘shocked and absolutely gutted to discover’ that she can’t be a councillor - something she was told only after she stood for election for the first time and won in Horfield.

Cllr Vittori was one of two Labour councillors who voters backed in Horfield - the other was the Labour group leader Tom Renhard - in the May 2 vote. But just as she was preparing to take up the role and begin to attend meetings, bosses at the council have told her she can’t be a councillor. It now appears certain there will be a by-election, which will cost taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds to stage, with voters in Horfield asked to go back to the polls just a few weeks after they voted.

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Deborah Vittori works as a teacher at a local primary school which is still run by Bristol City Council and, because the rules state that no employee of Bristol City Council can also be a councillor, she’s now been told she’s disqualified from the office she was elected to on May 2.

“I am shocked, and absolutely gutted, to discover that, because of my job as a teacher in a local authority maintained primary school, the law will prevent me from serving the people of Horfield who put their trust in me,” she said.

"Throughout my election campaign I spoke proudly of my role as a local primary school teacher. I was unaware that my teaching would end up disqualifying me from serving the public in another role, as elected councillor, and it is a great shame that this did not come to light earlier in the process,” she added.

“I have met so many amazing people in Horfield; it is a matter of deep regret that I won’t be able to represent them as a councillor,” she said.

Horfield has two councillors, and both were Labour before the May 2 election. Cllr Vittori was named as long ago as last October to be Labour’s choice to be their candidate following the decision by Philippa Hulme that she would not be standing.

At that time, Cllr Vittori said: “As a local primary school teacher I never thought I would get into politics, but this is my chance to help build a safer and healthier community for kids to grow up in, and for neighbours to grow old in.”

“In my role as a teacher, I have seen first hand the disparities within our community when it comes to having access to things that improve quality of life. The cost of living crisis has priced some families out of accessing leisure activities, with their wellbeing severely affected. My priorities would be improving access to things like safe & affordable housing, clean air, and nature-rich spaces you can relax in, because they’re a great leveller and make a huge difference to everybody in the area.”

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“In the months ahead I will work hard alongside Tom Renhard and Philippa Hulme, to win the trust of my neighbours in Horfield to vote for me next May,” she added.

Bristol Live understands that the onus on checking whether a candidate will be eligible legally to be a councillor rests with each candidate and the party that nominates them as a candidate - and each candidate and their agent has to sign a document certifying that they know of no legal reason why they can’t be. Checks on the eligibility of candidates are not carried out by the council until after the election when the winners are known, as the winning councillors begin being sworn in. The council’s monitoring officer flagged a potential conflict after asking which primary school Cllr Vittori works at and, when realising it was one run by Bristol City Council and not an academy, she was disqualified.

The council has now issued a notice of vacancy, and two people on the electoral roll can request that a by-election is held to replace Cllr Vittori.

At the May 2 election, she was elected with 1,485 votes, well ahead of the nearest Green Party challenger, Anna Meares, who polled 903 votes.

But the Green Party are expected to fight a by-election in Horfield fiercely. The party emerged with 34 councillors after the May 2 election, one short of exactly half the councillors at City Hall, so a Green Party win would give them an even stronger base with exactly half the seats.