Friends of Ashby Bath Grounds

The District Council has now confirmed that Oakland Hotels have withdrawn their planning application to build 5 "villas" on the Bath Grounds. This is a great victory in our battle to defend and protect the Bath Grounds for the Ashby community and we thank all our supporters for their help in this achievement. You may well have seen the Ashby Times article published today.If not you can find a link on our "Campaign" page.

However we cannot afford to be complacent. Oakland Hotels still have plans lodged for development of the Royal Hotel including 2 unsightly new buildings on the current hotel car park. Also, whist the Bath Grounds remain in private ownership, there is always a danger of further attempts to build on them. Our campaign will now turn to working with the Town and District Councils to ensure that they are properly protected in the new Neighbourhood and Local Plans and ideally to achieve community ownership of the grounds. Should the latter not be possible then we need to ensure that there is no impediment to the Town Council renewing their lease which expires in 2023 (see details below). We are also working with the Town Council to improve the grounds for community use and at their September 15th Parks and Cemetery Committee meeting we will be presenting our detailed suggestions for a properly constructed path for pedestrians and wheelchair users between the South Street and Prior Park Road entrances. We will be posting details of this project and a consultation document shortly.