14 June 2002
'Back to Bath' campaigners believe the wellbeing of the world heritage city has suffered since it was amalgamated with the mainly rural Wansdyke District Council to form the Bath & North East Somerset Council (BNES) in 1996.
They claim that their city cannot be run in tandem with a rural area. Those behind the non-party-political campaign point to what they see as a lack of city management, failings in the planning department and traffic problems.
Local Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster was presented on June 7 with a petition of 12,000 signatories calling for a unitary authority for Bath.
Anna Harper, a co-founder of the campaign in 1998, told Public Finance: 'It is about getting back autonomy for Bath. People do feel very passionately about it. The fabric of the city is going to pot so it was not difficult to get widespread and overwhelming support.
'There is tremendous dissatisfaction with BNES. Bath has no control over its affairs. Bath has always been self-governing and needs to be again for the good of its present and its future.'
The Back to Bath lobby stresses that the campaign is not pointing accusing fingers at individuals in BNES but at the structure of a council that attempts to please both the urban and the rural.
'It was ill-conceived in the beginning,' says Harper. 'It's the wrong mix. There's a great difference in our needs and aspirations and we don't think the merger can serve us or them. It was doomed to fail from the outset and it has.'
PFjun2002
