She's paid £180,000 a year to run Bristol City Council, so it's important she keeps in touch with what people want.

So Jan Ormondroyd decided to hit the streets to find out what's right and wrong in people's lives.

She started with a stroll in Easton, the first of a series of walkabouts across the city to meet the communities she serves.

During the next few months, the council's chief executive and her new deputy, ex-policeman Jon House, will tour wards as councillors' guests.

Mrs Ormondroyd – who came from Hull City Council to take her post in March – started her street-bashing in St Marks Road.

Councillors Abdul Malik (Lib Dem) and Faruk Choudhury (Lab) like to say cultures and races from every corner of the globe are represented in Easton.

But the problems are the same as any inner city area – drugs, prostitution, traffic, derelict shops.

Mrs Ormondroyd heard about it all during her tour.

Things improved for Easton in the 1990s, thanks partly to council funding to smarten up the shopping parades.

But traders fear the area around St Mark's Road and Roman Road – away from the main Stapleton Road, which is to benefit from regeneration project – is being forgotten.

The streets were quiet as Mrs Ormondroyd and the councillors set off at mid-morning.

So hardly any members of the public accosted her on the first tour.

She was approached by a couple of people, including skip hire boss George Bennett, who harangued her about delivery lorries blocking up St Mark's Road.

Mrs Ormondroyd said she would look into it.

Shoppers seemed to recognise their councillors – but not the city's highest-paid official.

It may take time for people to start putting faces to the faceless bureaucrats.

But Evening Post columnist Farooq Siddique, of the Bristol Muslim Cultural Society, based on Stapleton Road, told Mrs Ormondroyd: "I think your walkabout is a really good idea.

"Now you can see for yourself the environment we are working in. Otherwise, you are just up there in your ivory tower."

● Before the end of the year Mrs Ormondroyd plans to hold similar walkabouts in Knowle, Frome Vale, Southville, Bishopston and Hartcliffe.

Her deputy, Jon House, has already visited Ashley, Cotham and Avonmouth and is scheduled for councillors to show him around Stockwood, Brislington East and Westbury-on-Trym over the coming weeks.

He hopes to be able to organise a similar visit to Lawrence Hill by the end of the year.

Visits to other Bristol wards will be organised for Mrs Ormondroyd and Mr House.