Time to stand up for our city’s heritage
Please wake up council leaders, Bath’s UNESCO World Heritage status is in peril!
Historic England’s objection to Lidl’s planning application for a new store at Lambridge is ringing alarm bells.
Our council leaders are silent. Many key stakeholders are objecting. Loss of World Heritage status is serious stuff, threatening the economic base of Bath. Lidl’s development threatens our community and our environment.
A new store on the Lambridge conservation site would increase road congestion, cause public transport delays, and worsen air quality. A development here despite Lidl’s PR claims to the contrary, could not put back what it removed.
Habitat cover, the carefully surveyed floodplain wildlife, beaver working their way along the Avon: all this would disappear under development disruption. Lidl’s security lights would blaze on into the night sky.
These are the findings of environmental consultants retained by a Bath community’s crowd funded campaign.
Commenting on this planning proposal BBC wildlife presenter Chris Packham says he is, “very against the destruction of trees and associated landscape and concerned about the impacts on long term development of such a beautiful area with regards to wildlife, traffic congestion, destruction of habitats. This should not happen.”
The corporate giant Lidl is waging in a PR battle to win territory. It already has one store, and its latest real-estate plan is projecting three more in and around Bath.
The community of Larkhall and its neighbouring wards are appealing for support. A Lidl store at the eastern gateway to our heritagerich city says Wera Hobhouse MP, among many others, would cause it irreparable
harm. Lidl want
cheap food to be the issue here. Nearby Larkhall wants its valuefor-money groceries to remain available from within the heart of its community.
In the meantime, council leaders appear to be without comment or are neutral on this ‘climate and conservation’ critical planning application. BANES’ Libdem pledges on climate emergency, conservation, green space, wildlife and clean air are all being exposed.
A Libdem councillor in a nearby ward when asked about his views on this development replied, “I am neutral”. And this from a member of the council’s own Climate Emergency panel.
Given the conservation and heritage status of the Lambridge site it could have been turned back by the Libdem council at the pre-planning
stage, had there been a clear desire to stick to their pledges and lead. The fact that the application is still being put through the whole expensive council planning process is telling.
Lidl’s PR campaign as it rolls forward will attempt to divide our communities, divide our shared loyalties over the great game that is rugby and divide our council too. But we need not be divided by corporate expansion.
Lidl knows nothing of our heritage-rich city, its friendly community, and its vulnerable landscape. These are already under pressure from climate breakdown.
The infamous “Sack of Bath” was allowed to happen because at the time a few good people chose to do nothing. Their silence is deafening.
Among the mounting, planning
objections from residents there are many local and national stakeholders. For example, Wera Hobhouse MP; the Federation of Bath Residents’ Associations; National Highways; National Trust; the Environment Agency; and a refusal recommended by the council’s own department for Conservation of Historic Environment.
P J Stansall RIBA and N Squire Bath