Bath is unique in the number of people who choose to live in the city centre and in the social and economic diversity of those who live there.
This latter appears to be being changed by those entrusted with creating and managing social housing and other low-cost accommodation. We are increasingly seeing these organisation appearing to be pursuing policies which are displacing social housing tenants from the city centre and developing the resulting vacant properties for commercial gain by selling them, renting them out at commercial rents or even turning them into holiday accommodation.
These policies too often appear to be causing distress to tenants, threatening the nature of the city centre and displacing key city centre workers and turning them into commuters thus adding to their living costs and increasing the pressures on the city’s fragile transport network.
We are concerned that this is happening at all but we are particularly concerned that this appears to being done by unelected people sitting on the boards of organisations who seem to operate largely free of any regulatory or democratic oversight.