Roman Temple part of new national learning resource

 

The Roman Temple at Bath is included in a new learning resource developed by the British Museum to support the revised National Curriculum for History.

The web-based resource has been developed with support from 35 museums, of which the Bath & North East Somerset Council-run Roman Baths is one.

Around 100,000 school children of all ages visit the Roman Baths each year with around 12,000 having dedicated teaching sessions delivered on site by staff. It’s excellent that the Roman Baths, and specifically the Roman Temple, are going to be part of this important new learning resource.

Research has shown that the object-based learning in which museums specialise is a highly effective way of delivering education programmes with improved understanding and retention of information by pupils.

 

Objects like the Roman Temple from Bath, Guy Fawkes Lantern and a Fire Bucket from the Great Fire of London are just some of the wonderfully evocative objects on the website that bring people into direct and personal contact with the great events, people and stories that have formed and define our national heritage.

The website address is www.teachinghistory100.org

Two Tunnels – new access route

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From right to left Cllr Sharon Ball, Sarah Moore, Cllr Will Sandry, Cllr Paul Crossley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Two Tunnels cycle route has been an amazing new cycle link in Bath. It was built in partnership between National Lottery, Sustrans, BathNES Council and the Two Tunnels Group. The cycling connectivity through Bath is getting truly awesome. The Liberal Democrat run Council of the last few years has been investing in cycle links and paths and also joining up different paths. Just a few weeks ago we opened the new link from Batheaston to Bathampton. Now we are ready to oppen a new link from Claude Avenue down onto the Linear Way which leads to Two Tunnels.

These routes are not just great for cyclists and pedestrians but they also form jogging routes, dog walking routes and safe routes to schools.

Kelston Toll Road

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Me at the Kelston Toll Road doing one of many interviews since the road opened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the awful rains at the beginning of the year the land at Kelston started slipping down the hill. At the Kelston Road the movement was going on at a dept of 7 metres and the effect on the road was to open a wide and deep crack. We had to close the road. This is a main comuter route between Bath and Bristol and the closure caused a large diversion of 14 miles to get round it. Inconvient and time consuming and it affected the village of Kelston particularly badly.

The Council started monitoring the landslip and exploring possible repairs for when the land stopped moving. The land slip did not actually stop till mid June. However during this time local business man Mike Watts wanted a temporary relief road built. He got together with the local landowner and built a temporary toll road above the landslip which opened as a Toll Road at the end of July at £2 per trip.

This was built without planning permission. Luckily the retrospective application is now coming in. The Council itself could not have done this temporary road as the construction is not upto highway standards. Still it is proving popular with motorists and from the Council point of view it is not interfering with the major repair work to the road which has now started.

The Toll road has attracted a lot of media interest from across the country and beyond. Apart from ITV, BBC and Sky there has also been a visit from German ZDF TV. Also every radio station in the area has covered the story. Mike Watts has worked well with our Highways team to ensure that safety and efficient working happens.

The full repair which will cost in the order of £2M should be complete before Christmas.

Victoria Art Gallery – Exhibition Pass

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Picture shows me renewing my annual exhibition pass. A snip at £10.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Victoria Art Gallery in Bath is one of the BathNES Council’s many museum service venues. Apart from the free entry to the main collection the gallery regularly puts on visiting exhibition and for these there is an entry charge. However to encourage repeat visits we offer an annual pass for £10. This allows as many entries as you like to each and every touring exhibition. The cabinet of the council wants to ensure that touring exhibitions pay for themselves and thus are not a charge to local taxpayers. The scheme is working well and bringing in income. The Victoria Art Gallery also has its own Twitter feed .

The current exhibition is from the Radev Collection and is well worth a visit with a range of great art.

The Liberal Democrat run Council is doing a large regeneration on the Guildhall area with new employment areas, an extended market place, new restaurants in the undercroft area and also looking to see how we can extend the Gallery to increase its facilities and enable it to grow its business.

Change Project

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The City of Bath retains the heritage of it’s Mayor through the Charter Trustees. Each year the mayor is chosen from the Trustees and in any year may have over 600 engagements with the public and groups. One of the roles it covers is the Change Project whereby money is collected and used to help the homeless through charities such as Julian House and Big Issue. Each year the money collected is give out to the charities at the Change Project reception

Fracking Concerns

Fracking, in my view, is a very risky technology even with the best of safeguards. It would be far better getting far more households with solar power and more efficiency put into our old housing stock. However in Bath and NE Somerset our area is covered by 4 licences and 3 have expired and one has a 1 year extension. I have written to Government asking that the 3 expired licecnes should be revoked and not added into the next sale of licences. The reason is the risk to the world heritage city of Bath and its Spa waters.

In addition to Governement I have also written to several key environmental agancies and the Workld Heritage management asking for their support in this request.

for more inormation see this link

http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/content/council-leader-calls-coalition-government-protect-bath%E2%80%99s-natural-hot-springs

Cycle Fest

 

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The Cycle Fest at Odd Down was a great success on Sat 12 July with over 2000 visitors during the day. The new cycle track implemented by the Liberal Democrat Council is prooving to be a great success with many different cycle clubs using it and indeed travel from other towns to make use of the facility. Our next stage of development up at this sports hub is a new pavillion and changing rooms and other facilities.

The cyclists have got together to form a great new cycle club for young cyclists called the scorpions and lots of youngsters came along for the challenge races and everyone got a ‘Tour de France’ style t-shirt.

Land Registry

The idea to float of the land registry was another item of bad news for local councils. We deliver the service really well and efficiently and make a profit from the service which helps Councils. As Leader of Bath and NE Somerset I wrote to our two MPs Don Foster and Jacob Rees-Mogg to complain about this and asking them to support my Council’s plea and that from many other groups not to proceed with the idea. It is great that Vince Cable MP has vetoed the idea and so it is not now going to happen. Guardian article for more detail.

Alexandria Bowls Club

 

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As a Liberal Democrat Cabinet and Council one of our projects is to involve communities in running facilities and taking ownership of them so that they are in control of their own destiny. We call this our Community Asset Transfer programme. One of the facilities we are looking to transfer is the bowling club in Alexandria Park to the Bowls club that operate from there. It is an idea that is beneficial to both the club and players as well as to the Council.

Bath data gets hacked by the techies

Today at The Guild – a Liberal Democrat innovation to work with digital workers on creating an exciting co-working Hub – the Council  are hosting the first Bath Hackathon  ‘Bath: Hacked’ – a two day event to come up with a clever use of technology that could change the way we look at some of our data and improve life for all of us with innovative apps and tech solutions to understanding data.

‘Bath: Hacked’ will enable technology experts to think, play and hack a range of data streams to create their ideas. It is taking place at The Guild, High Street, Bath and the challenge is simple: make something useful for the community.

The Hack starts at 10.30am and continues through the night until 3pm tomorrow where demonstrations and presentations of the software or apps that are created take place. There is an overall prize pot of £2,000 for the best creations and the opportunity to present at the Bath City Conference being held 30 April 2014.

As the Leader of Bath and NE Somerset Council I am delighted to be welcoming some of the most creative hi-tech minds to the Bath: hacked event. Bath is a beautifully innovative city with an ever growing technology sector. The challenge we are putting to the people who have generated this reputation for our area is to create a really useful app or piece of software that will benefit the community. I’m certain it will be amazing what people can achieve in thirty-six hours and the Council is delighted to be one of the major sponsors of the event.

Again in line with our partnership approach we are working with the business community on this event and we are sure the sponsors who have joined us this weekend will value their participation as well.

A Big Thankyou to our sponsors Invest Bristol + Bath, Mayden, Real World Studios and Vidahost

People can follow the hack through the night on twitter @BathHacked

The data streams include the location of buildings, geography, environment, economy and jobs, population and demography, getting around, health and wellbeing, government and society, and historical data.

No personal data will be used in the event .