New approach to stadium needed

The beautifully crafted picture of Bath Rugby’s proposed stadium (Chronicle, 21 May) under the headline “Lockdown places Rec plans on hold” raises a large number of questions.

Not the least of these is that the whole future of professional rugby is under international debate due to the increasingly high cost of players needed to stay in Premiership rugby, and the insurance for now serious physical damage incurred by top division players all in all a financial timebomb.

Covid-19, certainly not the last pandemic, and climate change together question the wisdom of large gatherings in already congested and quite polluted town centres, in which Bath is not exceptional.

But Bath has some very particular problems. Your picture shows that the width of the Rec will not accommodate the length of a full stadium and we are offered a three sided design squashed between the Leisure Centre and Johnstone

Street homes.

The siting is also far too close to the riverside walk which, overlooked by the Tudor abbey, is a significant tourist magnet.

And the picture is deceptive because it foreshortens the actual height of the stadium and its overhead floodlighting, all of which will impact significantly on the attributes of the council’s adopted World Heritage Site management plan.

The cost-benefit of building a very large underground car park within Bath’s adopted congestion zone, on a flood plain, and the associated costs of upgrading adjacent road infrastructure, the costs of ventilation, fire escapes, security, maintenance and so on, appears extremely doubtful, more especially so as the premise of an income base for the stadium itself.

Perhaps more important is the Rec remaining open space in perpetuity, a legal stipulation repeated in the charges register of the lease between B&NES and Bath Rugby; this is why only planning consents for temporary development can be given.

Bath Rugby’s present application to the High Court to overturn the terms of the 1922 Conveyance which limits the noise and disruption caused, being defended by a number of citizens, will have no impact on the legal use constraints.

There can be little doubt about the future of the Rec as a public open space which is self-funded as a result of its income from the leisure centre and car park.

Rugby has always been a feature of the city but your picture shows clearly that this is the wrong solution on the wrong site and that neither Bath Rugby supporters, most of whom come from way outside of the city, nor Bath residents have been well served by Bath Rugby.

Your report on page 39 of the council’s rationale for allowing a further two years for the company to get its act together shows how far this council is prepared to go in not enforcing the law, pending a fresh proposal from Bath Rugby.

With such favour, a wholly fresh proposal is the least rugby supporters and citizens expect from Bath Rugby.

Steve Osgood

Bath