Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
2 FEBRUARY 2004
MR SIMON
THURLEY AND
MS DEBORAH
LAMB
Q140 Andrew Bennett: What I understand
now in principle is that if you are worried that someone might
come up with a planning application for re-development in your
area, you have to get in your objection before the planning permission
is sought. Is that not a bit unfair on people, because there may
be quite a few historic buildings in their neighbourhood and they
think they are perfectly all right? Why now tell people they have
to get in an application to protect them just in case someone
comes up with a planning application, because as soon as they
come up with a planning application it will be too late, will
it not?
Mr Thurley: What we want to do
is to encourage local authorities to have a look at their building
stock and we also, as the responsible national agency, should
be doing that. Quite frankly, our regional offices have a pretty
good idea where major regeneration schemes are happening, where
major schemes are happening and we should be in there way, way
up stream, looking at those buildings, working with the local
authority to make sure these issues are addressed to begin with.
Q141 Andrew Bennett: Does that mean you
are going to spot list before these schemes, as soon as you get
a hint of them? The developer is going to have to be even more
secretive, is he not to avoid you knowing about it?
Mr Thurley: Let me give you an
example of a very, very good project. We are working in South
Shoreditch at the moment on the City fringe. It is a joint project
between us, Hackney, the local authority and the GLA. All of us
know that is an area which is ripe for regeneration, ripe for
re-development; we also all know that it is a very rich area culturally.
It is the area with all the art galleries, all the clubs, pubs,
bars, a very, very rich cultural area. What the three bodies are
doing is a comprehensive survey to look at the historic environment
in those areas and work out what we think are the valuable things,
what we think will be the valuable ingredients in the regeneration
of South Shoreditch over the next five, 10, 15 years. What that
study will do, is give everybody certainty. That is what the developers
want. They want certainty; they want to know what the parameters
are. We would hold that up as a model of the local authorities,
the national agency and the regional body working together to
try to identify how the historic environment can be made to work
best.
Q142 Mr O'Brien: Does English Heritage
have the skills and expertise to deal with complicated planning
issues such as the ones you have just been outlining?
Mr Thurley: Yes, we do.
Q143 Mr O'Brien: What percentage of your
staff has had experience of the private sector?
Ms Lamb: We have a director, so
he is one of our senior managers, who is director for development
economics and he is an experienced developer and worked in the
development sector before he came to work for us. We have regional
estate surveyors and the role that our development director plays
is very much to be a source of advice for staff across the whole
organisation. So when they have particular issues to do with the
economics of development, they will come to him and he will advise
them on it.
Q144 Mr O'Brien: That is on the environment
side of development. Do you have secondments to the private sector
so that your staff have exchange of views and experience?
Ms Lamb: I must admit that I am
not experienced enough to know whether we have in the past. We
would have to come back to you on that. Certainly it would be
something we should like to see more of.
Mr Thurley: We certainly second
staff to the regional development agencies and local authorities.
Q145 Mr O'Brien: How do you go about
developing further the experience of your staff in the private
sector as well as the public sector so that there is no misunderstanding
and people are aware of what is happening with a regeneration
development?
Ms Lamb: We do have staff seconded
into some of the major regeneration agencies and regeneration
companies; the Leicester Urban Regeneration Company is a good
example of that. There is that interchange. On the other side,
our director of development economics actually regularly talks
to groups of developers, all sorts of developers to try to get
across the point of the importance of the historic environment
and potential that it has.
Q146 Mr O'Brien: What about your relationships
with regional development agencies?
Mr Thurley: It is very strong.
Our Chairman has recently been round and if he were here he would
tell you that he has spoken to every single chairman of every
RDA in the country in the last six months to ensure that we are
working absolutely in tandem on regeneration issues.
Q147 Mr O'Brien: What about the assemblies?
Do you have any contact with the assemblies?
Mr Thurley: Yes, we have a number
of contacts with assemblies.
Ms Lamb: In each of the regions
we have a regional historic environment forum which brings together
a range of people, including RDAs, including some of the development
agencies and local government to work together to realise the
potential of the historic environment.
Q148 Andrew Bennett: If you get two experts
together, there is a very good chance they will disagree. Is that
right?
Mr Thurley: Yes, it is right,
but that is one of the reasons why a national body like us is
important. What we try to do is to set standards nationally. We
try to make sure that there is a level of consistent decision-making
on matters relating to the historic environment, not only amongst
our own staff, but actually in local authorities. We regard that
as one of the crucial roles because sitting nationally as we do
we see how Land Securities is developing its projects in four,
five or six cities. We are able, through cross-fertilising between
those, to try to ensure that the same standards are set and, perhaps
even more importantly, lessons are learned from different developments
and passed across.
Q149 Andrew Bennett: Do you use the same
experts as Heritage Lottery Fund?
Mr Thurley: Heritage Lottery Fund
uses us.
Q150 Andrew Bennett: Exclusively?
Mr Thurley: Not exclusively, but
very largely for most.
Q151 Andrew Bennett: So you do not think
there is ever any disagreement between yourselves and Heritage
Lottery Fund?
Mr Thurley: We are responsible
for advising them on the historic buildings aspects of Heritage
Lottery Fund applications. Whether the trustees will then agree
with what we say is a different matter, because it is the prerogative
of the trustees to decide to fund something or not.
Q152 Andrew Bennett: You have this expertise,
so why do we need the CABE Urban Panel?
Mr Thurley: The CABE Urban Panel
started off as the English Heritage Urban Panel and is an extremely
good example of two national agencies working together to provide
some joined-up advice to local authorities. There is always a
danger when you have a whole series of national bodies giving
advice to local authorities that they get advice fatigue. The
Urban Panel is an absolute model of the way that two organisations
got together to try to give rounded historic buildings advice
to local authorities.
Q153 Andrew Bennett: When you look at
giving this expert advice, is it important that you make it look
right or that it is right? I am particularly conscious that on
a lot of your buildings some of your experts are very keen to
have oil based paints used because that is the sort of paint which
was used historically rather than perhaps more environmentally
friendly water based paints, which look just as good.
Mr Thurley: I could bore you for
many, many hours on the benefits of using lead based paints and
how much longer they last, etcetera. The point is that there is
a number of factors to be considered when one is dealing with
these types of issues. Design is one of them, the original fabric
is another. It is a difficult task to balance them all, but that
is what we and local authorities have to do every day, day in,
day out.
Q154 Chairman: Let us try mortars then.
I heard of a seventeenth century building which was moved and
put back together again where, allegedly, English Heritage insisted
that a 1930s mortar was used rather than a modern mortar because
that was about as near as you could get to the seventeenth century.
Mr Thurley: Clearly I cannot comment
on that.
Q155 Chairman: Can you believe that was
likely to have happened or is it apocryphal?
Mr Thurley: I very much hope that
did not happen. There is a very important point to make though
amongst all this and that is that the vast amount of advice which
is given to historic building owners is given by local authorities.
We deal with a tiny, tiny number of these sorts of issues and
if you talk to any developer, they would infinitely prefer to
deal with English Heritage than a local authority. The reason
for that is that generally speaking our staff are more experienced
and they have better skills and they are better trained than staff
in local authorities. What we believe is that the biggest thing
that has to happen to the conservation movement is that we have
to make sure that the skills are there in local authorities. I
am sure all of you could regale me with lots and lots of these
sorts of horror stories which you keep telling me and I could
regale you with even worse ones if I dug deep enough into my memory.
Some of them are true, some of them are apocryphal, but the grain
of truth that lies behind it is that very often you are dealing
with a local conservation officer who has insufficient skills,
who is poorly paid, is poorly trained, who is not in the right
position in the planning department, in the local authority, to
give really good, sound, imaginative advice. That is why one of
the principal efforts we have at the moment is to work with local
authorities to make sure those skills exist and the sooner we
can get those skills the sooner we can stop these extraordinary
stories which you are bringing up.
Q156 Mr Betts: You are talking about
joined-up advice to government, but what about the issue of joining
up government. You report through to DCMS, but more of the planning
and regeneration issues in government are through ODPM and local
councils have their responsibilities to that department. DEFRA
deals with regeneration in rural areas. You heard earlier from
Sir Paul about transport schemes which often get bound up with
some of the heritage issues. Is it not all a bit complicated?
Ms Lamb: It is indeed complicated,
but what all of that shows is that in some ways the historic environment
is a classic cross-cutting issue which impacts on a wide range
of policy issues right across government. It is up to government.
They could draw the boundaries in different places, but we would
still be in a position of dealing with more than one department
and probably several. What is very useful from our point of view
is that for the first time we actually have a funding agreement,
which is our agreement with government for what we will deliver
for the grant we are given, which actually has the ODPM and DEFRA
as joint signatories to that as well as the DCMS. There is a formal
recognition that we do operate across government departments.
Q157 Mr Betts: Are there any improvements
which can be made so that your advice is better received and more
effectively received in government?
Ms Lamb: Yes. What is very refreshing
is that now that funding agreement has been set up, that has led
to a regular mechanism which we have to deal with all those government
departments. One of the best aspects of that is that we deal with
all those government departments together, so it is not just a
question of us having to deal with them all separately, but we
actually get them in the same room together and talking together.
In that sense this has been a mechanism for joining up different
bits of government as well.
Q158 Mr Betts: Could I come back to the
crucial role of planning authorities in this? Are you having any
effect on improving the advice they are giving? Can that be demonstrated,
or are there any further things which you can do or which can
be done to make sure it happens?
Ms Lamb: Yes. In a few months
time we are planning to launch and to run for the next 18 months
a major programme to raise the level of skills and awareness in
local authorities. That is both to raise the level of awareness
of historic environment issues amongst non-conservation professionals,
the chief executive and people in highways departments and regeneration
departments. Those are the people who are taking decisions which
are impacting on the historic environment; it is not just the
conservation officers. That is one side of it. The other side
of it is to broaden the skills base of the conservation officers
and issues we have been discussing to do with development economics
and to do with community involvement. It is about broadening the
range of skills for those people and also raising the awareness
of the potential of the historic environment across a wider range
of local authority staff.
Q159 Sir Paul Beresford: You mentioned
earlier that a certain number of buildings are listed every year
and a certain number are de-listed. Do you ever instigate the
delisting?
Mr Thurley: We do, by the very
fact that it is up to us to advise the Secretary of State to de-list.
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