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Not the council, they've been pretty supportive.
Charity Commission and High Court, on the other hand - that lot took about a decade to clear - once the club stopped trying to appease the NIMBYs and see what the law would actually decide.
Did the full consult, and put in a planning application earlier this year. Then someone (English Heritage?) raised some objections late in the day (having not done so at consultation stage); so the application was withdrawn, changes made, and new consultation taken place.
Expectation is a new planning application to be put in within the next couple of months.
I don't know if they've heard back from all stake holders on the consultation yet.
Expectation has to be that something this sensitive will end up on the Secretary of State's desk before work actually starts.
ETA: A potted history, for anyone who cares. Going mostly by memory, and a little googling, all mistakes are my very own.
1890s: Bath moved to the Rec, private ground, owned by the Forrester family.
1920s: Forrester family donated the ground to the common people, for the purposes of outdoor recreation, setting up a charity to manage the land.
1996: Rugby turned professional, and Andrew Brownsword bought the club - not particularly interested in rugby per se, but a local philanthropist who wanted to support something important to the community.
Late 1990s: Some redevelopment took place, but mostly tinkering, it annoyed some local residents, because they bought a house near a rugby club, and that club had the temerity to play rugby in front of crowds!
Early 2000s: NIMBYs brought up the original covenants from the Forrester family, and decided that professional sport was incompatible with the charitable status. Charity Commission (and law courts) got involved for the first time. Neither the Charity Commission, nor the law courts are not to be rushed.
The Brownsword ownership threw out the odd idea here and there to keep people interested, but I'm not sure he had the desire, or the money, to actually do anything; seemed more about showing off how clever some architects could be (eg, there was a suggestion for a new East stand that would sink underground, leaving a grass roof during the off season - which was frankly silly).
2010: Bruce Craig bought the club, and seems to see the club as his legacy - moved training to Farley House, started getting serious about redevelopment.
Early 2010s: Lots of fighting and procedural discussions with the Charity Commission, who decided that the Rec must primarily serve public recreational use, but that professional sport is okay on there. Given that the charitable purpose is for outdoor recreation, they don't like buildings, beyond changing rooms, pavilion etc; but existing buildings are allowed to see out their life cycle, rather than be taken down. Some clever dick came up with the idea of a land-swap; whereby Bath Rugby gifted land elsewhere to the Bath Rec Trust, for use as outdoor recreation for the general public.
Some reworking of existing structures was done, but very much limited by things like footprint, and not changing things enough to upset the charity commission who might decide that it counts as new, and therefore not allowed. MSC issues like floodlighting, walkways etc largely sorted.
2014-15 ish: The Charity Commission accepted the land-swap idea in principal, The High Court agreed, this was final legal hurdle, cleared. In principle, Bath legally could build a new stadium, and potentially take a bigger footprint than their existing leases.
Permission was granted for the extended temporary stand, which was still required to be taken down every summer - as far as I'm aware, this was the final MSC hurdle - but I reserve the right to be wrong.
Late 2016-17: Architects hired, designs drawn up, consultations and redesigns, and repeats.
2018: First actual planning permission application. Objections on the principal of obstructed views, environmental concerns (including flood plain and all that), and a change in Council policy (IIRC this plan is the one that included raising the playing surface by 2m and including a car-park underneath it - which was... TBH, probably designed in, purely to be removed as a show of compromise). It did, however, provide the first chance to see what the real objections were going to be, and a complete redesign was started.
2020: ... and halted by Covid...
2022: New proposal put up for consultation with the public and other stake holders - this was probably what Bath actually wanted to build, but may have included some sacrificial elements.
Further extensions and improvements to the East Stand, now allowed to stay up over the summer (still not sure how we swung that, but I am sure that seeming to make progress on firm plans helped).
2023: Planning permission (2nd) formally applied for - bringing more objections out of the woodwork - this time on Heritage, and "integration with the surrounding environment".
2024: New plans drawn up, consultations with stake holders etc. As of a fan event in late November, the hope/expectation was to submit plans before Christmas.
TD : DR
First 15 years of professionalism, redeveloping the Rec was a nice idea, but considered impractical / impossible, so better to stick with ageing facilities than actually leave Bath.
Sorting out whether it could ever be legal to redevelop the Rec took until 2015 or so.
Doing so is incredibly complex, Bath is a World Heritage Site, and the Rec is both a flood plain, and the charitable status and covenants still apply (though SOME can be circumvented).
Covid got in the way a bit; whilst things like increasing awareness of the climate emergency, new governments etc make it a constantly changing process.
Large bodies like the Environment Agency, English Heritage, Charity Commission, UNESCO and various levels of law courts etc do things at their own pace, and you can either accept that, or accept absolute failure.
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