Bath could temporarily drop UNESCO status

BATH could temporarily give up UNESCO World Heritage Site status it gained in 1987 in order to build new suburbs.

World-famous for its Roman baths and Georgian architecture, Bath is the only entire city in the UK to be designated as a world heritage site. Now Liberal Democrat-run Bath and North East Somerset Council is considering temporarily giving up the status in order to change the wording.

Currently, the world heritage site inscription covers not just the city itself but also its setting in a “hollow in the hills.” That description prevents the city from building more suburbs around it - something the council says it needs to do to hit the Labour government’s new housing targets.

Changing that wording would mean Bath would have to be delisted as a world heritage site and then reapply to be one if UNESCO approves of the change.

Council cabinet member Matt McCabe (Bathavon South, Liberal Democrat) told a council scrutiny panel on September 24: “I don’t think there is, in my view, any reason why UNESCO wouldn’t allow us to rejoin.”

The radical suggestion comes as the council administration faces backlash over its proposed local plan, a major document which sets out where future housing developments should go.

When the newly-elected Labour government changed how housing targets were calculated in 2024 doubling the number from around 14,0000 to 27,340. Restrictions around building in the world heritage site mean that most of those homes would be built away from the city in North East Somerset instead.

Under the proposed local plan, Bath would only get around a quarter of new homes with the 5,900 being built in the city only fractionally more than the 5,700 proposed for Keynsham, despite the town being five times smaller than Bath.

Initially, the council had proposed allocating land between the edge of Twerton and the Globe Roundabout however the government’s planning inspectorate said that their local plan would be rejected if this was included in it without the support of UNESCO.

At the scrutiny committee on September 24, chair Andy Wait (Keynsham East, Liberal Democrat) told Mr McCabe: “You have actually created a plan that is pretty unpopular everywhere in Bath and North East Somerset. […] The statement ‘the right houses in the right places’ is a joke because frankly we are building the wrong houses in the wrong places.”

Committee member Duncan Hounsell (Saltford, Liberal Democrat) added: “We have had 13 years where this was an inevitable situation and in that time the world heritage site management plan has been updated at least twice. Has the planning policy team actually been asleep at the wheel in terms of this issue for 13 years?”

Mr McCabe said this was “harsh” as the council did not expect the housing target to be doubled.

He said: “I don’t think anyone has been asleep at the wheel but, last year, I went up to government and said: ‘You have doubled our target. You have to do something about Bath.

“We can’t expand the city and we can’t build up because of the UNESCO listing.’ And there was no interest last year.”