Hot on the heals of adopting a “Local Plan Partial Update” on January 19th, the council is now engaged in the early stages of developing the next full Local Plan, the main planning framework for developing our area up to 2044 (the new plan must be ready for adoption by September 2025). This is a long and detailed process and we will work with other residents associations in the city to ensure that the views of those of us living in the heart of Bath are heard and headed during a series of statutory consultations.
Initial scoping work and evidence gathering will take place during 2023, culminating in an “Options Document” consultation, which is scheduled to take place between October and December 2023.
At this early stage, one of our concerns is the quality of the required “evidence base” that will be used to draft the Plan. We call for full transparency on how this evidence will be gathered and by whom, the methods used and the costs involved and the level of professional/scientific scrutiny that will be applied in reviewing the quality of the evidence gathered.