Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-200)
2 FEBRUARY 2004
MR CHRIS
BROWN, DR
ROB PICKARD,
MR GEORGE
FERGUSON, MR
MIKE HAYES
AND MR
JACK WARSHAW
Q180 Sir Paul Beresford: Would you feel
that there are examples of exactly the opposite, in other words
the cost is higher just because of the listed building?
Dr Pickard: Yes, the costs can
be higher certainly, but on the other hand the specialist skills
you are going to have and the jobs you can create from re-using
the heritage can be very significant. It is also being shown in
a number of places where public money has gone into the heritage,
that you have levered quite considerable numbers greater from
the private sector in terms of investment. So there is an economic
benefit from investing in the heritage.
Mr Brown: May I answer that from
my practical experience? We invest money to get returns for policy
holders and almost invariably—there will be the odd situation
where it does not apply, but almost invariably—we will look
to keep not only listed buildings but other unlisted but attractive
or historically interesting buildings in the area, because we
think it adds value. We are a long-term investor, so we invest
over 10-plus years.
Mr Hayes: Very often there is
a gap in funding and the public sector needs to come in and meet
that. The value is way beyond the monetary value of the real estate
created, a huge community value placed into heritage-led regeneration
and the whole issue of the value in terms of sustainability as
well.
Q181 Sir Paul Beresford: What is the
attitude of the institutional funders?
Mr Hayes: The institutional funders
will be risk averse by and large and will be looking for a return.
It is very much the public sector role to bring in the private
sector funding we can and the private sector skill that we can
and where there is a gap, to meet the gap to the benefit of the
wider community.
Mr Ferguson: My experience and
the experience of a lot of our members is that conservation-led
regeneration does add value. That is a generality, but it is a
generality which would be true, whether it be in Leeds, Liverpool,
Chester, Bath, wherever it is in general. You can think of Leeds,
which I know Mr O'Brien is familiar with, take the Calls area,
the fact that was a conservation-led regeneration scheme, or take
the Victoria Quarter which helped change the centre of gravity
of Leeds in terms of its retail because of that historic value.
The Prudential who did that recognised the added value that brought.
There is another one in Leeds. I do not know why I keep thinking
of Leeds, but it is a very good example of a city you do not necessarily
think of as an historic city, but which is using history in schemes
like the brand new glass covered scheme in the middle of Leeds
which has the SAS-Radisson Hotel in it. It is using historic buildings
in a very creative way, together with contemporary architecture.
I have absolutely no doubt that those all add value. If you look
at the sort of value which Urban Splash have managed to squeeze
out of schemes, I know that they have given evidence. We happen
to be working with them on a scheme and they squeeze the value
out of schemes by using that added character. Sometimes you cannot
get that added character in a new scheme, simply because historic
buildings break current regulations and you cannot. There is a
need for a look at how we break rules, I am talking about planning
and building regulation rules, in order to get some of the excitement,
charm, sense of place that one gets in historic schemes.
Q182 Sir Paul Beresford: I know this
is a very broad question to ask, but could you touch on the risks
you feel are specific to this type of scheme involving heritage
compared with others?
Mr Ferguson: The biggest risk
is delay. You are right about the institutions. The institutions
are extremely conservative in terms of the way they approach things.
What has happened with the institutions is that they get advised
by the commercial agent, who advises them not to take that sort
of risk, therefore they advise commercial agents in reverse. It
is a circular argument which leads to a very conservative way
of thinking. The biggest single risk is the question of the time
it takes and the time is often a factor of the quality of the
application. If people take the right decisions early on and get
the right advice and put design high on their agenda and knowledge
about historic buildings high on their agenda, they are more likely
to get a quick result. Let us not disguise the fact: dealing with
historic buildings is a longer process, is almost bound to be
a longer process than on a virgin site for instance.
Mr Warshaw: It is vitally important
to realise the import of George Ferguson's last comment. It is
so often the case that neither the applicant, nor the applicant's
team, nor the local authority knows sufficient about the building
or even the area in question to be able to justify their proposals
on the one hand or be able to judge them intelligently on the
other. The application therefore becomes only the start of a longer
process which should have been undertaken before the application
was put in.
Q183 Sir Paul Beresford: We can all think
of some superb examples, and you are a past master at them, of
a paint brush across a screen and we just see this glowing building,
but in a percentage of cases one would suspect that really what
should happen is a bulldozer through the building. I am thinking
of some of the 1950s and 1960s buildings. Would you agree?
Mr Ferguson: There are bound to
be some cases where either a building has got beyond sensible
repair or the situation has changed, its circumstances have changed.
I do believe that it is right that if a building is judged to
be listable for architectural, esthetic, historic reasons, there
must be a presumption in favour of its retention. Therefore the
onus is on those applicants and their architects to prove that
they can do better. That is the whole thing. If you can design
a dramatically better building or dramatically better—and
I do mean dramatically better, not just marginally—than
exists there, then there must be a case for removal of a listed
building.
Sir Paul Beresford: I shall not mention
my gasometers again.
Q184 Chairman: Let us try to get Mr Hayes'
vigorous nodding on the record. You would agree.
Mr Hayes: Yes. I just wanted to
recount an occasion when, as the director of planning, I applied
for planning permission to demolish two Georgian houses in Liverpool,
owned by the city council. That went to public inquiry and the
inspector decided they ought to be demolished. The reason for
our case was that they were totally shot, they were derelict and
there was no feasible way of seeing them brought back into use
in the market at that time.
Q185 Sir Paul Beresford: I am tempted
to touch on my gasometers again. Since there is a review of the
way in which English Heritage is approaching these sorts of matters,
what would you suggest which might actually help? Should the system
of delisting be speeded up?
Mr Ferguson: There should not
be a system of delisting. Delisting should only be applied where
there is a real circumstance for the removal of a building. I
cannot see the point in having a general delisting programme.
Q186 Sir Paul Beresford: All right: procedure.
I will change the word. English is my second language.
Mr Ferguson: No, no; I know exactly
what you mean. What I mean is that the procedure is bound to entail
you jumping through certain hoops, it is bound to be quite protective.
Q187 Sir Paul Beresford: If you were
a developer sitting there with a 1950s building which you have
decided has to come down, the local authority has decided has
to come down, everybody seems to feel so, are the hoops too long,
could they be shortened, could there be a more straightforward
way of doing it?
Mr Ferguson: As architects we
are often frustrated by the planning and the listed building consent,
the length of time it takes. We would not want it to be sped up
to the extent that it compromises the solution. It is a matter
of getting the balance right. If there is real unjustified delay
in the case of some planning permissions or things which have
been dealt with by local authorities, and I can point to examples
now, one I am dealing with where there is no objection, absolutely
no objection, it is agreed that it is okay but it has taken nine
months, one just wonders what on earth is happening. That is not
a delisting case that is simply a listed building consent.
Mr Warshaw: Let us try to get
this absolutely straight. The criteria for delisting are simply
that on the one hand wrong information was given which formed
the basis of listing in the first place, or, something has happened
to it since it was listed in effect to take away the reason for
listing. Otherwise, you simply apply for listed building consent
to demolish and you use those criteria as something to justify
the demolition.
Chairman: Thank you for that clarification.
Q188 Andrew Bennett: Can we just go through
the planning process? If something is listed or in a conservation
area, how far do people putting together a scheme really have
to spend a lot more money up front before they get an idea as
to whether the scheme is a runner or not?
Mr Warshaw: I believe that if
enough is understood about either the building or the area in
question beforehand, there should not be a significant amount
of money which has to be spent up front to put together any scheme.
Q189 Andrew Bennett: You think they should
be able to get outline planning permission rather than having
to go for a detailed one?
Mr Warshaw: If a conservation
area appraisal has been properly carried out and the opportunities,
the negative parts as well as the positive parts, really well
identified and the urban design work part of the system and all
of the briefing and development master planning work actually
carried out up front, it is not quite the same as an outline planning
permission, but it amounts to a very positive steer about what
should be acceptable at a particular location.
Dr Pickard: One of the problems
may be to do with the bureaucracy in that at the present time
there are many different permissions, consents. You may require
listed building consent or planning permission. If you are on
a site that is within a conservation area and there are unlisted
buildings, conservation area consent will be required for demolition
of such buildings. It could also have an ancient monument on it.
The ODPM is now looking at the simplification, the possibility
of unified consent regimes, where matters could be brought together.
That may assist to speed up the process.
Mr Brown: A quick comment from
me about practicalities. We are doing regeneration in conservation
areas all over the country. The reality in the present system
is that you can get an outline planning permission in a conservation
area, but the resistance you will get from local authorities varies
from place to place and more or less at random. I take very much
the points which have been made before, but it seems to me that
for a 20-year regeneration programme over a 20-acre site comprising
maybe 40 or 50 listed buildings, a detailed consent is just not
feasible.
Mr Ferguson: What should accompany
that outline permission is a strong master plan and a design statement
and the master plan and the design statement should be judged
and agreed and referred back to. That does not mean there cannot
be improvement, but it should be seen as a defence against what
we have seen happening, which is a slightly cynical use of the
outline planning permission, to excite people with a vision and
then retreat into the dull and the unimaginative. An outline planning
permission concerns a lot of authorities, who feel that once they
have given it they can be held to ransom by developers and I understand
that concern. It is a concern of ours that some of our best architects
are used at the early stages for so-called trophy architecture
and are then replaced by less good designers, some of whom may
not be architects.
Q190 Andrew Bennett: You are telling
me that good practice is possible but that it does not always
happen. Is the new planning legislation going to make it easier
for good practice to happen or is it not going to make any difference?
Mr Ferguson: It is going in the
right direction. It is a more transparent process, it is definitely
referring very strongly to sustainable development, it is encouraging
just what we are talking about in terms of conservation-led regeneration,
it needs very strongly to signal the importance of good design,
which it fails to do at the moment and we are hoping that this
will be incorporated.
The Committee suspended from 5.30pm to 5.40pm
for a division in the House
Q191 Chairman: Would you care to continue?
Mr Ferguson: I was particularly
emphasising the need to install design into the Planning Bill.
It has been accepted by government in the House of Lords and by
Lord Rooker that this is an unanswerable case, that the matter
of design should be included in the Planning Bill and it sounds
as though it is a matter of how. We believe it should run alongside
sustainability as an equal case to sustainability and that it
should be defined in the planning guidance rather than in the
Bill itself, but nevertheless mentioned and emphasised in the
Bill. I say this very strongly, because it applies so much to
listed buildings and conservation areas and the matter of the
repair and care of our historic buildings cannot be separated
from this whole question of the importance of design.
Mr Hayes: Two points about upcoming
legislation. One is that I hope the new local development framework
concept at local level will enable the planning system to be much
more at the delivery end and much more on the front foot. The
great thing it does is separate strategy from local delivery.
The concept of area action plans, which will allow local authorities
to work with partners and with communities to join funding regimes
and the like, to set up regeneration schemes in advance of developers
coming along seems to me to be potentially a very, very positive
move. On a more general front, an upcoming best value performance
indicator in relation to the quality of the planning process,
requiring local authorities to state whether they have urban design
skills and conservation skills, is also absolutely, in my view,
a move in the right direction.
Q192 Chairman: May I move to the question
of who benefits from heritage-led regeneration? Mostly it leads
to higher property costs, so it could be argued that the benefits
are only to those who can afford to move into such communities.
Is this not just about gentrification?
Mr Hayes: It certainly does not
have to be. The whole business of bringing historic buildings
back into use is about finding end users. If we are clever about
finding those end users in relation to community need, maybe housing
need or whatever, it ought to be possible, particularly making
greater use of CPO powers, to join up the resource of the historic
building or the historic area and the end user who will not simply
look at rising property value but social benefit and social good.
Mr Ferguson: One hopes that successful
regeneration brings greater prosperity with it. There is a certain
balance between the fact that inevitably successful regeneration
does inflate local prices. There is a sort of inevitability about
that. You cannot escape from it. It does not necessarily mean
mass yuppification. What compensates for it currently and is used
extensively is the matter of affordable and social housing within
private schemes. Our view is that that could be spread in a more
creative manner rather than just simply loaded on the private
housing developer and that it would be healthier to do so. A successful
regeneration is not just a mix of building types and styles and
old and new, it must also incorporate as much mix to our minds
in the way of forms of tenure and types of use. It does seem strange
to us that this whole burden is currently on the private housing
developer.
Mr Brown: There is a missing ingredient
and that is affordable work space. We are getting much better
at affordable housing, but we are very poor at affordable work
space. It is normally the artists and the creative people who
are first there and who are first to be pushed out by regeneration.
It seems to me in policy terms quite easy to sort out. So long
as those people can be assisted to get ownership early in the
process and benefit from the rising values, or similar systems
to affordable housing put in place, then we can maintain that
mix, which we actually value. Most people do not like sterilised,
gentrified areas.
Q193 Chairman: May I ask RICS specifically?
You make reference in your evidence to the notion of the RDAs
and EP having historic environment targets whilst English Heritage
should have regeneration targets. What do you have in mind and
how might they be measured?
Mr Brown: I would probably draw
the comparison with British Waterways, who were given a regeneration
mission in 2001, Waterways for Tomorrow. That transformed
the way they did business. It seems to me that we heard some interesting
things from English Heritage earlier. The number of people with
private sector experience I counted from the response was one.
It seems to me that if your target is to conserve historic buildings,
you will fill your staff with archaeologists. If your task is
to do with regeneration, you will start recruiting a wider skill
base of people to allow you to hit those targets.
Q194 Christine Russell: I just want to
be absolutely clear what your views on the listing process are.
You said at the beginning, quite rightly, that there should be
a presumption of retaining listed buildings. At a later stage
you criticised the length of time it can take to obtain listed
building consents. If you were rewriting the listing regulations,
what would you put in them? How would you improve the existing
system.
Mr Ferguson: The best way of improving
it is to bring it all under one umbrella. We do have various forms
of protection and I would hope that would be the way the DCMS
lean towards bringing it under a single umbrella, although nevertheless
you then have to have discrimination, you have to have the skills
to recognise how many hoops you have to jump through, because
you will still have the buildings which are now scheduled monuments,
you will still have the grades of listing, you will still have
conservation area consent, so they require subjective judgment
in order to deal with them at the appropriate level and in the
appropriate time.
Q195 Christine Russell: I am assuming
you would go along with the suggestion we heard this afternoon
from English Heritage that there will be no more spot listing
once the development process had started on a certain site. Yes?
Mr Ferguson: Yes. What Simon Thurley
said was absolutely right. Our clients want clarity; they want
certainty, more than speed. That matters much more to them. What
is incredibly destructive is to be led down a path which is suddenly
stopped. We would accept that complicated planning applications
take time. What we do not accept is that they zig-zag or go into
reverse. That is what we need to avoid.
Q196 Christine Russell: I assume that
you will accept that a different set of skills and expertise is
perhaps needed when you are working in an historic environment.
Can I ask you to be honest about how good and extensive those
skills are within your membership? It seems to me that in every
town and city there is one specialist architectural practice which
deals with historic buildings.
Mr Ferguson: You have a very fine
one in Chester.
Q197 Christine Russell: I am just trying
to tease out of you, as a professional—
Mr Ferguson: It is true, as some
architects have a greater experience of working with hospitals,
some architects have greater experience of working with historic
buildings. What is surprising, and delightfully surprising, is
that you might get an architect who is seen as a very contemporary
architect being extremely clever with an historic building. The
Great Court of the British Museum is an extreme example, a rather
large one. That happens very delightfully in very small buildings
as well. It is undoubtedly true that some architects are better
at handling it, have a better understanding of the historic environment
than others. It will always be thus. Another thing is that there
are some local architects who have a greater understanding of
their place than those who are flown in from outside. Those are
generalisations and I can show you really good cases which break
all those generalisations.
Q198 Christine Russell: You have no fears
that those kinds of skills are on the decline in your profession.
Mr Ferguson: No. Far from being
on the decline, it is something we take extremely seriously and
that there is more training for and the whole matter of accreditation
which has come in recently, which has been forced on us by English
Heritage. We accept the rigour that it brings will mean that there
are more architects who are having, for their own economic good,
to get more interested and au fait with historic building
issues.
Q199 Christine Russell: May I ask you
for your comments on the reliance which appears to be happening
on procurement through design and building contractors? How much
of a risk does that pose?
Mr Ferguson: It is something which
personally I do not welcome. It has been a trend which means that
we, as professionals, are put in a more awkward position in that
our client becomes the contractor, whose real interest is to get
out as economically as possible with as much profit as possible,
instead of our client being the developer or end user. The preferred
client is the end user, who is interested in getting the best
quality result. That is generalisation, but one can see where
the pressure is coming from. We are put in a position of being
compromised more often when we are working for the contractor
in some form of design and build situation, whether it be PFI
or not, than we are when we are working for the end user or the
developer themselves.
Q200 Andrew Bennett: Preserving historic
buildings is distorting history, is it not? Is there any justification
for keeping the Victorian building unless you keep the pea soup
fog to go with it, or the Elizabethan houses without the excrement
in the street?
Dr Pickard: The conservation philosophy
most people working in the conservation world will accept, even
going back to William Morris last century, accepts the change
which occurs to buildings and we do not restore back to one period.
We recognise that change is important and it is also part of the
process of management that we can allow further change to occur,
including the rehabilitation for new uses. We do not think about
it as being at just one period, we think about it as a continuing
history in a sense.
Mr Hayes: It is something of a
cliché, but it is using the past to build a future. That
is the trick.
Chairman: Do we really want to leave
this session on a cliche«? It looks as though we are going
to have to. Thank you very much for your evidence.
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