Records of Bath City Council and Bath & North East Somerset Council: Council and...

The Council minutes and related records form the official record of the actions and transactions of the Council, and show how the Council was carrying out its responsibilities. They include minutes of meetings of the full council and of committees, both signed and printed; agendas and summons for meetings; and accounts presented to the council and committees for approval. They also include records relating directly to Council members (councillors and aldermen) such as declarations of acceptance of office, and declarations of interest, and the papers of individual councillors.

The minutes fall into three sections:

1. Minutes of Bath City C ugh up to 1835, a municipal borough 1835-1889, and a county borough 1889-1974. These changes reflect changes to the structure of local government, but they had little effect at a practical level; on the contrary, there is evidence of an enormous amount of continuity in the conduct of the council over this period. The transition from chartered borough with a corporation to a municipal borough under an elected council appears to have been seamless. The first meeting of the new council took place on 31 December 1835, with the minutes written up in the same volume as the last meeting of the old council, which took place on 24 December. The minutes are headed 'meeting … in pursuance of an Act …for the Regulation of Municipal Corporations'; and the councillors are listed against the names of the wards for which they were elected, but the business dealt with by the council remained completely unchanged. The change to county borough status seems to have taken place with no formality and indeed to have passed almost completely unnoticed. Not only do the minutes of the council and its committees continue in the same volumes, the first meeting of what was technically now the county borough, which took place on 2 April 1889 (the Local Government Act came into force on 1 April 1889) makes no mention whatsoever of the change. For these reasons, the minutes for the whole of the period 1631-1974 are dealt with as a whole.

2. Bath City Council, 1974-1996
In 1974, local government reorganisation brought a major change to Bath City Council. Although its name stayed the same, the Council became a District Council, a second-tier authority, under the County of Avon, with reduced functions and responsibilities. The minutes for this period form a separate entity.

3. Bath & North East Somerset Council, from 1996:
Reorganisation in 1996 produced another major change, as the County of Avon was abolished and Bath joined with the neighbouring Wansdyke District Council to form Bath and North East Somerset Council. This is a unitary authority, responsible for all services, covering Bath and the surrounding area. Again, the minutes from 1996 form a separate entity.

System of Arrangement
While it is possible to divide the minutes themselves into the three different Council entities, some of the related records (for example, declarations of councillors and books of precedents) relate to the Council across two different time periods. These have therefore been catalogued separately.

The records are arranged as follows:
BC/2/1 Minutes and related records of Bath Borough/City Council (up to 1974)
BC/2/2 Minutes and related records of Bath City Council (Bath as a District Council, 1974-1996)
BC/2/3 Minutes and related records, Bath & North East Somerset Council (from 1996, continuing to accrue)
BC/2/4 Notices of Motion, Record of Precedents, Bath City Council (up to 1974) and Bath City Council (1974-1996)
BC/2/5 Records relating to members of the Council (e.g. Declarations of Acceptance of Office)
BC/2/6 Papers of individual councillors

Only the minutes of Bath City Council up to 1974 (section BC/2/1) have been catalogued in detail. Please contact Bath Record Office for more information on other sections.