Update 8/7/22: Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees has insisted he has not banned BBC-funded local democracy reporters from his press briefings – but said they are not invited.

“There’s no ban but they’re not invited,” he said at a council meeting, according to a report on BBC News from one of Bristol’s local democracy reporters.

Rees, whose alleged ban of LDRs led most local media to boycott attending, said: “The whole fortnightly press conferences were set up by me. There had never been a practice like that in the council of setting up press conferences on a regular basis to give the city’s journalists easy access.