The celebrated return of a view is off this summer — due to the city’s success in the rugby and the climate emergency. usually has to take down the East Stand at its pitch on the Recreation Ground each summer to allow the space to be enjoyed unobstructed outside of the rugby season, under a rule laid down by . But following — which saw them — the club has been given the green light to keep it up all summer.
Having to keep the stand up to play meant that the East Stand would only have been removed for nine to ten weeks before it needed to be returned for the new season — and three weeks of that on each end would be spent taking it down and putting it back up. Chair of Bath and North East Somerset Council’s planning committee, Ian Halsall (Oldfield Park, Liberal Democrat) said: “It just seems bonkers to be taking down a stand to reassemble it just for a few weeks.” He was speaking at a meeting of the planning committee on June 6.
, with just four people lodging messages in support of the club’s proposal. Speaking before the council’s planning committee on Wednesday June 5, local councillor Manda Rigby (Bathwick, Liberal Democrat) urged the committee to keep the rule in place to require it to be taken down. She said: “Parties are held on the day the stand gets removed and the long hidden view of Bathwick Hill and fields returns to view and the outstanding universal value of our World Heritage Listing to do with seeing the setting of Bath is restored.
” She.
