Concerns over plan to develop Twerton

Plans for the redevelopment of the Twerton Park football site were unveiled at an exhibition last week, with positive spin and a visit from BBC presenter Ali Vowles. The benefits of this “investment in Twerton”, which is to involve the building of 385 student flats at Twerton Park, were listed. The development would give Twerton High Street a face-lift with smart new shops and a new community venue. It would mean that Bath City FC doesn’t have to relocate, thereby preventing the pitch from being sold and built on. The plans have met with the approval of some locals. After all, what could really be wrong with all that? Well forgive me for being the skeleton at the feast, but perhaps a lot. The moral framework underpinning this redevelopment is rotten. The capital comes from fleecing students for money, charging them sky-high rents for box-room apartments.

The 385 students themselves would constitute another workforce, competing for part-time manual jobs that hundreds of residents use to sustain themselves. No scrutiny is ever conducted to see how bringing in this secondary workforce could worsen situations of need in Twerton – a ward which already suffers from much income poverty. The new retail units may well be unsustainable, and the community venue looks set to be a boozy latenight nuisance to many. Meanwhile, the developer stands to make an income of perhaps £2.5 million per annum from the student flats; but it is claimed that there is no other way to make this project viable. The land itself is identified in the Council’s Placemaking Plan as one of the last in Bath where homes could be built. Since 30 per cent of those would be affordable homes (including social rent), this would help our desperate housing crisis. Some of the locals supporting the scheme turn out to be people who live near the football pitch and don’t want housing built there. They brought children into the world, but they don’t want homes for the next generations built nearby. “Not here. Not in my green view.” I remember once hearing the findings of a Church of England Children’s Society report. It concluded that children suffer as a result of adults putting their own interests first. Maybe sometimes they do? Joe Scofield Southdown