Bur the BCA was founded in 1948
That's all fine, but the specs are almost entirely irrelevant to modern pool. Even WPA specs are subject to being ignored by WPAs discretion. Basically WPA and BCA have been asleep at the wheel for decades. They could have either enforced their specs or updated them to be more in tune with the times (then enforced them). But they did neither, and so everyone ignores them. That is what they deserve, but unfortunately it leads to everyone and their cusins-uncles-grandmothers-neighbours-friend having opinions on pocket specs and nobody to really set the record straight. So we get pointless bickering that goes nowhere.
Realistically, how hard would it f-ing be to make a pocket template, like in snooker? Heck, one could even have two, one for recreation and one for sanctioned tournaments. Then the BCA could put their stamp of approval on a table and collect their fee, or not. No stamp, no WPA/BCA tournament for you. You could then also have two separate records, if the recreational template became popular for league play etc. That would be fine and not really a problem, because everyone would know what the specs were, down to the last degree of pocket cut or milimeter of shelf, and if the table conformed to neither, the record would be unofficial or invalid.