Bath and North East Somerset Council has revoked its own permission to build a cycle lane through a Bath park just three days after it started work on the controversial £2.35m project.
The council began roadworks for a contraflow cycle lane on part of the road which loops around Royal Victoria Park on October 19.
But on October 22, the council revoked the formal traffic regulation order (TRO) permitting the scheme as it admitted it had missed a major objection to the scheme due to “technical and administrative oversight.”
Walk Ride Bath is a campaign which promotes cycling in the city but it raised personal safety concerns about putting the cycle path through a park. The campaign submitted a nine page long objection to the scheme — but nobody at the council had read it.
Now the council’s director of place management has revoked the TRO so that the council can consider the objection. They said: “After the TRO was sealed, it was brought to the attention of the council that a lengthy document objecting to the TRO was not taken into consideration due to a technical and administrative oversight and therefore was not placed before the decision maker.”
Walk Ride Bath said: “We spent weeks putting together our response to the Bath walking, wheeling and cycling links (BWWCL) consultation in November 2024. We looked at what worked, what needed improving and where the proposed routes failed to join up. We did that because we want Bath to have better walking, wheeling and cycling infrastructure — not because we want to hold it up.”
The cycle lane had already been hugely controversial. 84% of the 261 people who responded to a consultation were opposed to the planned cycle lane. Almost 3,000 people have signed a petition urging the council to pause and rethink the scheme.