The National Trust has submitted a revised planning application for its £17 million refurbishment and alterations project at the Grade I listed Assembly Rooms.
The Assembly Rooms in Bath
The project includes a new Georgian visitor experience, due to open in late 2026 at the Grade I listed site in Bennett Street.
A number of changes have emerged during investigative works which have led to additional planning and listed building consent applications.
Bath & North East Somerset Council had been expected to make a decision on the project by the end of February this year, but the revised application will further delay the permission that the National Trust is anticipating.
It is still hoped that construction work will begin in 2025.
A report says that the wider design team, including the experienced design consultants, have been “digesting the discoveries” made during investigative works last year and the spaces uncovered following the strip-out of 20th-century partitions in the area of the former Fashion Museum.
The report says: “This improved understanding of surviving fabric and condition has now been coordinated into the evolving design for the new visitor interpretation planned for this area.”
The “intrusive and degrading” elements of the Fashion Museum are to be removed and the lower octagon vaults restored to their former condition.
Electrical cabling and heating pipework will be removed and there will be discreet replacement of cabling to support lighting and information panels.
The Assembly Rooms housed the world-famous Fashion Museum until 2022 and had been let to the council since 1937 but the National Trust enforced a break clause to take it back.
The council has plans to open a new Fashion Museum with a purpose-built collections study centre at the old Post Office on New Bond Street but last year suffered a setback after its bid for £20 million of Levelling Up funding from the Government failed.
The latest planning application reference for the Assembly Rooms is 24/02631/FUL and there is also a listed building consent application.
The deadline for comments is 30th August and the council’s new target date for making a decision is 17th September.
