Contrary to popular belief, BathNES council is not run by inummerable committees with endless meetings.

Most policy decisions are now taken directly by the Conservative cabinet, which are occasionally reviewed by Scutiny panels. However, there are some remnants of the old committee structure left where legally required. These are the judicial and regulatory committees which are run non-politically for legal matters. I have sat on two of these this week, Regulatory & Access and Planning.

Yesterday’s Regs committee in Keynsham town hall created 44 new footpaths in the city centre within a matter of minutes. This is less dramatic than it seems, the footpaths are already there, but they are now formally recorded. This is part of a long term plan to record all of the paths in Bath onto a definitive map. Such a map already exists for the mostly rural former Wansdyke area. Bathwick is next to be recorded!

Today was a planning meeting, my first as holder of an architecture degree. For a few of the applications I was strongly tempted to re-design the proposals but forced to resist. It is a shame to think that something could be done better, but have to permit the development because it would be unreasonable not to. Still, the planning committee is an architectural court, we neither make the buildings nor the laws, we just examine whether one matches the other.