Bath City Council /B&NES Planning Department: records relating to the conservation...

The whole of the city of Bath is an UNESCO World Heritage Site, designated because of its 18th century townscape built around the ancient thermal spa. It contains around 5000 buildings which are listed by Historic England (formerly English Heritage) as being of historic or architectural interest.

The need to preserve the city's iconic historic buildings and townscape was recognised by the Council from at least the 1920s, and a pioneering clause in the 1925 Bath Act enabled the Council to exercise some control over the appearance and location of new buildings. It was the Bath Act of 1937, however, which marked a major step forward: the Act gave the Council the power to draw up a list of all buildings erected before 1820 which were of historic or architectural interest, and made it compulsory to obtain planning permission for any alterations to buildings on this list.

Bath suffered extensive bomb damage in 1942, during the Second World War. After the war, while the repair and preservation of iconic Georgian buildings was seen as important, the need to provide adequate housing as speedily as possible was also seen as a major priority. As a result, the 'Plan for Bath', published in 1945, designated certain areas of the city as Comprehensive Development Areas, where substandard housing - much of it Grade III listed Georgian 'artisans' dwellings' - was to be demolished. The preservation of the significant Georgian buildings, on the other hand, was assured by Council policies and various schemes for grant-funding. The first of these, started in 1955, was the Bath Terraces Scheme, which provided grants to owners for the restoration of the facades of listed buildings. In 1968, six small areas of the city containing the most important parts of Bath's architectural heritage, were designated as conservation areas, and in 1973 these were consolidated into one large area.

In the meantime, the demolition of Georgian housing in the Comprehensive Development Areas which took place from the mid 1950s onwards led to considerable controversy. Critics of the Council's policies thought that renovation would have enabled the preservation of a significant part of the built heritage and given context to the iconic Georgian buildings which were being preserved. By the early 1970s a major 'Save Bath' campaign had developed, backed by the Bath Preservation Trust and others opposed to Council actions and proposals. However, the period also saw a change in Council policies. In 1974 Professor Roy Worskett, who carried out ground-breaking work on conservation and wrote the seminal work 'The Character of Towns: An Approach to Conservation', was appointed City Architect and Planning Officer. In 1975, the conservation area was significantly extended to include 'all those parts of the city that make up its architectural and historic heritage and its landscape setting'. In 1976, a Conservation Study Team was set up within the Planning Department to examine how a practical programme for conservation could be established. The resultant report, 'Saving Bath', published in 1978, was optimistic that most conservation problems could be solved. The availability of central government grants to renovate old houses, introduced by the Housing Act of 1969, helped to consolidate this change to a policy of repair and restoration rather than demolition. From the mid 1970s, a small team of architects and support staff within the Planning Department concentrated on matters of conservation, and their records, listed in this section of the catalogue, comprise a significant record of Bath's buildings.

Professor Worskett left the Council in 1980, and under a restructuring of council departments he was not directly replaced as city architect and planning officer. Instead, the planning department, including the architects involved in conservation and listing, became part of the Department of Environmental Services. Since the early 2000s, although the Council is still concerned with matters of conservation and listing, it no longer directly employs architects.

Sources:
Michael Pearce, 'Saving Time: A review of the conservation movement in Britain in the 20th century' at http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/time/time1.htm accessed 1 Sep 2015
Interviews with former members of staff of Bath City/B&NES Planning Departments/Sections
Internal evidence from the records