Is Bath apathy leading the city into a real transport disaster?

An edited version of the following letter appeared in the Bath Chronicle on 15 April 2009:

Travel from A to B. Apathy to Belligerence.

Those of us that choose to live in or around Bath have done so for reasons that will soon be unavailable to future generations. Similarly, those that choose to visit do so because in global terms there are few destinations more English than Bath. But while provisions for an escape from normal tourist routines are well-documented, the threats to the city's unique attributes from an apparently uninterested local authority are relatively unknown, and very real. Despite recent promotions, at great expense to local taxpayers, it's clear that very few people know the true nature of transport proposals being submitted for forthcoming planning committee considerations.

The city's future now lies in the hands of a small number of non-representative people who will change the way the city looks and functions forever. Not for better. The explanation for this can be summarised in a single word: Apathy. Created by a general lack of faith in the cynical manipulations of democratic process (see B&NES promotional materials for examples), the will to engage in issues that shape the quality of Bath life has been eroded and the resulting detachment from political processes has led to the rejection of any or all information that might allow good judgements to be made.

But the real concern for Bathonians (and visitors to Bath) is the propagation of this apathy by those with political power in order that their ambitions are met with less resistance in execution of the Public Realm and Bath Transport Package strategies. In this climate, cultivated to remove the electorate from due process and apply such convenient labels to them as 'apathetic' or 'ignorant', decisions have already been made that will provide no public services in the spending of approximately £60m of public money.

There are no public or professional consultative mandates for the proposals in any published documents and if there are any proofs that council strategies will solve the city's transport issues they have not been made available. In fact their own information, especially that submitted in reams of planning applications, serves only to contradict any claims of benefits for Bath. Alongside the restriction that only matters relating to land use are considered relevant planning queries, substantial barriers to discovering more relevant information and being a part of the council's aim to 'engage with local communities' have been erected and efforts to seek further knowledge by writing to members of the council directly have been consistently dismissed with very unhelpful responses.

The Freedom of Information Act states that an individual has the right to ask any public body for all the information they have on any chosen subject and, unless there is good reason not to, the organisation must provide the information within a month. On this basis, together with similar attempts to educate, senior council officials have been asked 29 separate and specific questions. The responses were abysmally ill-informed, deliberately evasive and extremely worrying. 16 were answered in ways that avoided or ignored the salient points of the questions and the remaining 13 were not answered at all. In this there is evidence that Planning Policy Guidelines and the FOI Act have been at best manipulated and at worst ignored by B&NES council, against public interests as, without good reason, no information has been received. If this is not the truth and the FOI Act has not been contravened, council responses can only be seen as reasonable if no relevant information exists.

Therefore, if the future you want to see is under such dubious management, to bring about the urbanisation of Bath's green spaces, more congestion resulting from the release of suppressed traffic demands, more congestion resulting from the introduction of more traffic controls, revenue-boosting parking charges, the introduction of revenue-boosting congestion charges, greater restrictions on access to city centre locations and businesses adversely affecting the local economy, the complete destruction of unique biodiversity and open spaces, more central street and environmental damage caused by larger buses, incremental major developments surrounding the city - risking its World Heritage status, huge ongoing parking site maintenance costs to the taxpayer, or the wholly inappropriate promotion and development of Bath as a shopping destination comparable to and competitive with Bristol (for example) - then support B&NES council and contribute further to the apathy by doing nothing.

If on the other hand you care about Bath, its history and its future, there is no reasonable alternative to becoming active to stop: 1. The waste of taxpayer's money on ill-conceived public sector major developments; 2. The deceits of publicised plans to 'tackle congestion'; 3. The complete destruction of ecological sites crucial to the life and character of Bath and; 4. The cynical manipulation of planning guidelines to avoid public participation and accountability. These things are happening now and will continue to happen in Bath if apathy prevails.

Because these views against the proposals will not be shared by everyone, comments here have been written mainly for those whose arguments are founded solely on the right to express a difference of opinion. But while any future built on this as an overriding principle will enjoy the individual freedoms of pluralism, they will undoubtedly be short-lived. Instead, the issues must be addressed by simply asking what is right and wrong? because while it is rare for opinions to be fully polarised, making a truly sustainable difference means applying fully-researched and well-defined judgements. In the case of transport strategies these are judgements that we must not allow politicians to make who have already demonstrated and encouraged a divisive pluralism and who cannot or will not answer simple questions.

P G Johnston, Batheaston resident.