By John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter: Bath and North East Somerset Council is set to decide whether to spend £10m on a hugely controversial building project on a unique wildlife haven in Bath.
The council plans to build 16 homes as a council supported housing development for people with autism and learning difficulties on a field by Englishcombe Lane. It says the homes will be “life changing” — but the plan has been hugely controversial as the field contains rare limestone formations called tufa and is a site of nature conservation interest.
Planning permission was granted a year ago and now the council’s cabinet is set to vote at its meeting on September 11 on whether to allocate £10.122m of capital funding to begin building the scheme. The funding is a combination of a grant from Homes England, section 106 contributions from other developers, and borrowing supported by “net rent and service savings resulting from the scheme.”
Although the £10.122m figure has been published on the council website, it is not mentioned in any of the publicly available papers going before the council cabinet. Meanwhile, the business case being considered by the cabinet has been excluded from the public documents, an action which councils are legally able to take if it is judged commercially sensitive and the public interest is better served by keeping it secret.
But on the Tufa Field website — tufafield.com — which hosts blogs about the field, campaigners have criticised the decision. A post on the website said: “The decision to redact the business case is nothing short of outrageous and a blatant abuse of powers designed to legitimately protect privacy and commercial sensitivities.
“There is no case in this instance to protect this information, the council has a budget and an expectation of long-term cost-saving and these should be publicly available for scrutiny and long-term monitoring before commitment to expenditure of this amount of tax-payers’ money.”
If the funding is approved, as expected, at the cabinet meeting, the council plans to put the scheme out to tender within the month, award a contract in November, and see the first enabling works begin in February 2026 with a full start on site in July 2026. It hopes the scheme will be completed by March 2028.
The scheme is intended to allow people with complex needs to live “as independently as possible in their own homes with the care and support they need on site.” The council has warned there is a shortage of supported living in the area and the scheme is intended to allow more people to be housed within Bath and North East Somerset — cutting down on expensive out of area placements for the council, as well as bringing people closer to their families.
Under the plans, the springs, tufa deposits and streams which run through the middle of the field would remain. The homes will be concentrated in two clusters on each side of the them, with a “boardwalk” footpath bridging the centre of the field. The development would also provide overnight accommodation for carers and would include a “community hub.”
The report going before the council cabinet said: “The consented scheme delivers a low density, sensitive and small-scale scheme that uses the ecological value of the site as an asset and opportunity to create a peaceful housing environment for people with specialist housing needs. The scheme would be able to provide supported housing with care to around 16 tenants.”
The council cabinet meets at 6.30pm on September 11 in the council chamber in Bath Guildhall.
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