Examination of Witnesses (Questions 201-219)
2 FEBRUARY 2004
MR JON
ROUSE, MR
LES SPARKS,
MS CAROLE
SOUTER AND
MS JUDY
CLIGMAN
Q201 Chairman: Good afternoon. Would
you be so kind as to give your names for the record, please?
Mr Rouse: I am Jon Rouse, Chief
Executive of CABE.
Mr Sparks: I am Les Sparks. I
am a commissioner on CABE. I am also a commissioner on English
Heritage. I was the head of planning at Bath for 10 years and
Birmingham for eight and a half years.
Ms Souter: I am Carole Souter
and I am Director of the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Ms Cligman: I am Judy Cligman.
I am the Director of Policy and Research at the Heritage Lottery
Fund.
Q202 Chairman: I have given everyone
else the opportunity to make a brief statement if they need to
add anything to their written submission, otherwise we shall go
straight to questions. Good. As NDPBs, how clear do you find the
guidance you receive from central government departments on heritage-led
regeneration?
Mr Rouse: Reasonably clear and
getting better, is the way I would describe it. Obviously it is
not easy because you have two government departments each providing
part of the package: DCMS the designation material and ODPM leading
on the relationship between the historic environment and planning.
The way the two processes of review have gone forward in parallel
this time round has been a lot more joined up than perhaps it
has been in the past.
Ms Souter: I very much agree.
We have a very broad definition of heritage, so of course we are
also working with DEFRA on the natural environment, countryside
and so on. We have good working relationships with all the departments
we need to work with.
Q203 Chairman: Do you think the guidance
you receive is clear enough?
Ms Souter: Yes. We are in a position
where, as a lottery distributor, the guidance for us comes through
our policy and financial directions as to those things we should
be looking to do and looking at social and economic deprivation
is one of our policy directions. Within that it is then for our
trustees to decide how they distribute their funding on an individual
case by case basis.
Q204 Chairman: There seems to be some
concern, with the change from conservation area partnerships and
the move to heritage economic regeneration schemes. People have
some doubts about how long these particular initiatives are going
to last. Is there anything the government can do to provide reassurance
about the sustainability of some of these funding streams?
Ms Souter: The important thing
for any funding stream is to make sure it is doing the job it
needs to do at that particular time. That may well mean that over
time you need to change the rules slightly, refocus, make sure
you are hitting the button. From our point of view, our current
townscape heritage initiative schemes which are our regeneration
schemes in areas, are something to which we are committed and
which is built on the conservation area partnership schemes of
the past.
Q205 Mr Betts: I think you heard the
question I asked of English Heritage earlier about your working
together. Do you think you work together effectively? What are
you looking at in terms of the grant regimes to avoid the duplication
of applications and the problems that incurs for people?
Ms Souter: I think we do work
together effectively, not least with English Heritage being our
advisers on these schemes. One of the benefits of being able to
work in parallel is that we have slightly different areas in which
we can work. We are not bound by English Heritage's restrictions
on Grade I and II* buildings, for example. We can look at any
building which a local community feels is of value to that community
and that gives us a broader canvas to work on. Where we can work
together, it increases the benefit we can get for the money we
have to put into a given scheme.
Q206 Mr Betts: Do you not have a wider
regeneration remit perhaps than English Heritage in terms of the
sorts of schemes you are looking at? Does that create any differences?
Ms Souter: Yes. It is true, in
that we have a broader canvas, which we can work on, so we can
look at schemes in areas which simply would not come within English
Heritage's vires or key important areas. Working together
is the best way of getting the most out of the money we separately
have available for regeneration schemes. I do not think we have
had any tensions in the past in that area. The churches scheme
is another good example where we can pool our resources and make
sure we have the widest spread of projects which can benefit from
those resources.
Q207 Mr Betts: Looking at the wider spread
of activities you might support, I suppose people think of the
lottery as giving money to lots and lots of different sorts of
projects which can be appreciated by a wide range of people, because
it is the wide range of people which contributes. How do you avoid
getting into a position where you are seen as taking from the
many but giving to a number of projects which are really only
enjoyed by the few, they are a bit highbrow in terms of the people
who might appreciate them?
Ms Souter: There is a number of
different ways in which we do that. First of all, we develop all
of our strategy and planning in a very open and collaborative
way; our strategic plan is based on a lot of consultation with
the public and with representative bodies. We use mechanisms like
citizens juries to make sure we are informing ourselves what people
feel about heritage and what they feel is important. We also do
a great deal of work at grassroots level. Our current strategic
plan focuses on getting more small grants out to local communities
and the majority of our grants in the last financial year were
for less than £50,000, which is probably not something which
is widely appreciated, because obviously the big projects tend
to be the ones which get the most national publicity. Regionally
and locally communities are probably much more aware of the smaller
grants we give and the smaller projects we support, because they
are widely reported and widely supported locally.
Q208 Mr Betts: You have a particular
remit to look at schemes and get involved in activities which
reduce economic and social deprivation. Do you have a particular
target for that? Can you demonstrate you are achieving that fundamental
objective?
Ms Souter: We have a continuing
monitoring of where our funds are going across the country and
we are aiming to ensure an equitable spread of grants across the
whole of the UK. In the last 12 to 18 months we have introduced
two or three development staff into each of our regional and country
teams to go out and look at those areas which combine low levels
of heritage lottery funding in the past with evidence of economic
deprivation. We are working very hard to get those communities
to think of themselves as communities which can come to the Heritage
Lottery Fund for funding. It is very early days yet to be able
to demonstrate the extent to which that is working, but we are
clear already that a lot of communities are coming forward now
and saying they did not realise they could apply and now we have
gone out and spoken to them there are many more applications from
those areas.
Q209 Christine Russell: May I ask CABE
some questions? I was quite intrigued to read in your submission
that you recommend perhaps considering for listing buildings which
you describe as having a community worth. What do you mean? Cherished
local landmarks like the village pub or the corner shop?
Mr Rouse: A little bit like that.
I will tell you where this comes from and why we reached that
tentative conclusion. Basically, if you map where conservation
areas and listed buildings are against levels of deprivation,
using the indices of deprivation, what you find is that it is
almost an exact correlation and the richest areas have the most
listed buildings and conservation areas. That is partly a reflection
of the fact that heritage does add value, people like living in
areas which have lots of heritage. There is always a danger that
can almost become self-perpetuating and add to the divide. We
come across situations where even planning inspectors within more
deprived areas which have less recognised listed buildings and
conservation areas, allow things through which would never have
been allowed through if it were anywhere near a conservation area.
Over the years how does an area of relative deprivation with very
few historic assets which can be listed in terms of their architectural
and historic significance protect its own historic identity? We
just wondered, in terms of the system, whether community worth,
the value a community places on a building or an area, should
not somehow be recognised more clearly within the system. Did
it just have to be something which was down to the experts or
could communities have a voice?
Q210 Christine Russell: Is that not going
to lead to mega inconsistencies across the planning system? You
are going to have a building in one area which is afforded protection,
whereas the same building in another area has no protection at
all.
Mr Rouse: To be fair, within our
response we do not say it is a perfect solution, we say that there
are problems and it could lead to a lot more appeals. What we
were trying to drive at there was how to stop a two-tier system
from developing, whereby there is protection in richer areas and
anything goes in poorer areas. We had a case in Leicestershire
a few months ago in an area where the local population were trying
to stop Kentucky Fried Chicken painting the Colonel's face on
the roof of a shop. The planning inspector gave that firm the
go-ahead because it was not near or in a conservation area. Where
are the protections for communities which do not have access to
an historic environment as defined by the experts?
Mr Sparks: One of the things being
looked at by the review of the designation process at the moment
is the relationship between statutory designations at a national
level and local designations made by local authorities. There
is a big opportunity to develop the latter in respect of buildings
which, looking at them strictly on the basis of their architectural
and historic criteria, may not merit listing, but which, are very
important within a community. Local people frequently come forward
looking for protection for a building because it has some significance
for their community. They get a rebuff when they are told it is
not of the necessary standard. We could develop this aspect of
local listing to very great benefit.
Q211 Christine Russell: You must be able
to see the dangers. I can think of a community where perhaps MacDonald's
want to come and convert the local chapel which is a local landmark.
What you are then going to do is put the local authority in a
planning appeal situation, are you not, up against the monied
lawyers from MacDonald's?
Mr Rouse: We accept the difficulties.
What we are trying to drive at is that this two-tier system exists
and the gap is getting wider. How do areas of deprivation which
do not have many historic buildings protect their local identity?
Q212 Christine Russell: May I go on to
ask you about all the, some would call it additional layers of
bureaucracy, let us say, interested parties who are responsible
for the built heritage? You have English Heritage, from whom we
have heard, you have Heritage Lottery Fund and now CABE have set
up the Urban Panel.
Mr Rouse: You have the chair here.
Q213 Christine Russell: That gives design
advice, I believe. What is that doing that English Heritage is
not doing?
Mr Sparks: I am glad you asked
me that question. The Urban Panel was actually set up by English
Heritage originally, but it is now a joint CABE/English Heritage
Urban Panel. It is a collection of very distinguished—apart
from me perhaps—people from a range of backgrounds: architects,
planners, engineers, historians, archaeologists, people from regeneration
backgrounds, development backgrounds. We go and visit historic
towns and cities, hopefully at an opportune moment in their life,
when something of significance is being contemplated. Our remit
is to go there as friends to look at what is being suggested.
Q214 Christine Russell: Do you invite
yourselves?
Mr Sparks: No, we always make
sure we are welcome and we are invited. We may engineer the invitation,
but we would never go anywhere we were not welcome. We have always
been welcomed, wherever we have gone. We go there to listen to
what people have to say, what they tell us about their town or
city, what they are trying to achieve there. We do not go there
to preach or to tell them that they have got it wrong, but we
go there perhaps to share the collective expertise which we have
gathered from previous visits in order to provide suggestions
about other solutions which we have seen adopted in other places.
What we are focusing on is not a design review service; this is
about looking at the strategic development plans, master plans,
the overall approach to how you get the best out of the historic
environment, the place which has been inherited from the past,
in order to steer the place forward to a confident future.
Q215 Christine Russell: How do you get
on when you try to sell good, modern design in an historic environment
to local people?
Mr Sparks: Increasingly with very
willing acceptance. Often people struggle with what is good modern
design, but increasingly these days people recognise that our
towns and cities need good modern buildings to exist alongside
treasured old ones.
Q216 Christine Russell: Do you think
we are genuinely going to move forward rather than just be building
pastiches of houses?
Mr Sparks: Yes. We went through
a period where perhaps we were in a bit of a cul-de-sac during
the 1980s. It was an over-reaction to some of the most unfortunate
excesses of the 1960s and 1970s, where buildings which were very
bad buildings were not necessarily bad buildings because of the
architecture per se, but because of the relationship between
that architecture and the historic environment; the relationships
were wrong. I do not believe pastiche has really won many hearts
and minds.
Q217 Christine Russell: It has local
people.
Mr Sparks: Not always; no. I think
a lot of people feel that in the end it is not really very convincing.
I am increasingly meeting local people who say they would really
like to have some good modern buildings for their town.
Mr Rouse: We are also fans of
and passionate about good traditional architecture. What we are
against is bad pastiche, not pastiche per se. There are
some very good examples of traditional schemes done with great
craftsmanship and with great ingenuity, using the right source
materials and creating environments which are absolutely fantastic
to be in. The problem schemes are those which fall somewhere in
between. They are neither brilliant, modern, contemporary architecture,
nor good traditional architecture, they are just bad pastiche.
Q218 Christine Russell: How concerned
are you about what seems to have happened on some schemes where
you have had renowned architects coming in, putting forward original
designs, everyone has been very pleased, attention has turned
away? What you have actually ended up with is a fairly mediocre
design because those renowned architects have not seen the scheme
through to completion.
Mr Rouse: This is absolutely right
and we have published guidance on this called Protecting Design
Quality through the Planning System which gives planning authorities
a blow-by-blow account, including draft policies, draft decision
letters, draft conditions, draft planning agreement statements
which they can use to stop that happening. That is incredibly
important. It is very difficult to stop through intellectual property
protection or copyright. It is very difficult to stop through
planning law which is concerned primarily with uses and not with
the hand of the architect. There are mechanisms and we have been
through them all and brought them all together in one place in
this document.
Q219 Andrew Bennett: Both organisations
have been in existence long enough now to make a difference. If
we look at the period you have both been in existence, the deficit
in the number of people with training and skills in planning and
conservation has got worse and worse.
Mr Rouse: You are absolutely right
and I have said as much very publicly and vocally. It is now some
five years since Lord Rogers' urban task force reported. He said
that skills were the number one deficit, both in terms of urban
design and conservation. The reality is that we have seen very
little done about it as a result. We are now all waiting Sir John
Egan's report on how we solve this skills deficit and the most
important thing is that we act very promptly because we have wasted
enough time already.
Ms Souter: We would entirely agree
that a good level of skills is absolutely crucial to the quality
schemes we are looking to see. We do ask for training plans in
our bigger schemes. We do ask people to demonstrate how they are
going to share skills and lead to the growth of skills, but it
is not something which one body is going to do on its own. The
Egan report will be important, but the work which is under way
with the various training bodies to look at appropriate schemes
is going to be incredibly important for all of that.
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