Bath City FC need to be more open

“Bath City FC should get out of Twerton as they really don’t care what they do to us residents.” That’s what one angry Twerton lady typed on social media, after trying to get answers in the club’s latest consultations with the community over their proposed redevelopment of Twerton Park. And while I can see that the redevelopment has its merits, I do have some sympathy for her view. With proposals to build student blocks with up to 390 bedrooms, the scheme would be visually oppressive and an example of overdevelopment. And I suspect with others, that the board have treated it as a foregone outcome no matter what residents say. To date, the consultation process has been appalling, with the community never given reliable illustrations as to the visual impact that this scheme would have. The latest illustrations show two radically different pictures, with one apparently understating the blot that six-storey blocks rising behind the High Street would create. The one issue where the club really seem to be ‘listening’ is to do with the parking problems that would be caused - and I suspect that this has more to do with feedback from planners in response to the club’s pre-planning application, than with concerns the local community has raised. The prospect of having several hundred more students competing with Twerton’s poor for low-paid work in the area is also a concern, potentially having an impact on quality of life in a ward that already ranks high on the Index of Multiple Deprivation. I recall that when I attended a meeting of the Bath City FC Community Working Group earlier this year, everyone agreed that the scheme was controversial, that there would need to compromise, and that the students themselves come away with a bad deal (paying high rents for small apartments). Suddenly these meetings, or invites to them, stopped. Fancy that. Joe Scofield Southdown Bath