Building Heights
Bath Preservation Trust on May 21st called on Bath and North East Somerset Council to produce supplementary planning guidance on building heights in Bath, in line with English Heritage recommendations. A press release from Caroline Kay, Chief Executive of the Trust, stated:
“We welcome the fact that English Heritage is highlighting the need for the Council to have a buildings heights policy, something that the Trust has emphasised before. The Bath Western Riverside proposals made all of Bath aware of the potential impact of 8-or 9-storey buildings on views in and out of the World Heritage site. Whilst none of these buildings is yet at detailed planning stage, we believe they and other high buildings should not be developed without City-wide policies on building height and view management from the city skyline. In the case of Western Riverside, there should be very clear design and aesthetic reasons, as well as economic, for breaching the general guidance of 4-6 storeys. Although a document has been produced within the Council explaining the landscape setting and indicating viewing corridors for the World Heritage Site, which was endorsed by the World Heritage Steering Group, this has not been translated into supplementary planning guidance and does not seem to be drawn to the attention of developers. In the absence of a policy from the Council, the Trust will consider working up its own proposals for the principles which should be used to assess appropriate building heights in Bath”.
Background
Bath has not yet responded to English Heritage’s call in 2007 to all Councils, especially those in historically sensitive areas, to draw up specific guidance to developers about the heights of buildings.
A key feature of the universal values of the World Heritage site is the homogeneity of the low-rise buildings and the landscape setting of the City. At a national conference on tall buildings held in Oxford last Friday (16th May), Charles Wagner, Head of Planning and Regeneration Policy at English Heritage, outlined the risks to local authorities of operating without such a policy, saying that tall buildings have a significant impact on their setting and that it was the responsibility of a local authority to ensure that they are built, if at all, in the right places and to the highest quality, and with an understanding of site and context. Such policies, he said, also need to take account view analysis: ‘is it the right building in the right place’. English Heritage had recently criticised B&NES for not having such a policy in its response to plans for Twerton Mill where the Historic Areas Advisor, David Stuart, stated:
“It seems clear that there are a number of sites in the western part of the city which in principle lend themselves to redevelopment of some form. At present, the absence of a framework to establish some broad development principles, such as building heights, allows each site to come forward on an individual ad hoc basis, making it difficult to provide helpful and effective advice, and without a regime within which a series of schemes can be promoted and decisions made with confidence.
“Whilst such a framework has been generated for the Western Riverside area (SPD), there exists a vacuum around it in terms of complementary coverage which could be positively filled”.