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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 47-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: HOUSING, PLANNING, LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE REGIONS COMMITTEE THE ROLE OF HISTORIC BUILDINGS IN URBAN REGENERATION
Monday 9 February 2004 TONY HURST OBE, MS PAULA GRIFFITHS, THE VERY REVD PETER JUDD and PETER LONGMAN YVETTE COOPER MP, RT HON LORD MCINTOSH OF HARINGEY and MICHAEL SEENEY Evidence heard in Public Questions 227 - 359
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee (Urban Affairs Sub-Committee) on Monday 9 February 2004 Members present Chris Mole, in the Chair Andrew Bennett Sir Paul Beresford Mr Clive Betts Mr David Clelland Mr John Cummings Mr Bill O'Brien ________________
Witnesses: Tony Hurst OBE, Member, Inland Waterways Amenity Advisory Council, Ms Paula Griffiths, Head of the Cathedral and Church Buildings Division of the Archbishops' Council and Lead officer for the CHF, The Very Revd Peter Judd, The Dean of Chelmsford, Vice Chair, and Peter Longman Director, Theatres Trust, examined. Q227 Chairman: Welcome to the waterways, churches and theatres session of the inquiry into the role of historic buildings in urban regeneration. Could I ask you to give your names for the record please? Mr Longman: Peter Longman, Director of the Theatres Trust. Good afternoon. The Very Revd Peter Judd: Peter Judd, Dean of Chelmsford Cathedral. Ms Griffiths: Paula Griffiths, Head of Cathedral and Church Buildings Division for the Archbishops' Council. Mr Hurst: Tony Hurst, Council Member of the Inland Waterways Amenity Advisory Council. Q228 Chairman: Can I thank you for your written submissions? We give people the opportunity, if they feel the need, to make a brief opening statement; otherwise we usually go straight to questions. Are you happy to go straight to questions? Mr Longman: Yes. Q229 Mr Clelland: I wonder if the witnesses would like to outline for the Committee the contribution that historic buildings make in regeneration within each of your respective areas of interest? Mr Longman: They are large buildings, they are usually prominent, they are often in town centres, and they were built, of course, for a public purpose. Often these days they are in parts of town which are perhaps run down, particularly in the evenings, and one of the advantages of the theatre, if you get it back into use, is that it brings life back into the town at evening. The life that comes in tends not to be the disruptive element and, of course, it then helps other industries, whether they are restaurants, bars, taxis, and so on. It is less expensive to restore or modernise an existing building than to put up the equivalent new one. The London Coliseum, where the restoration is just about to re-open, will have cost about £40 million. The cost of putting up an equivalent new building to that, if you could find a site, is probably at least double that figure. The Hackney Empire is now being refurbished and re-opened at a cost of abut £15 million. The cost of an equivalent new building is at least £30 million, again, assuming you could find a site. There are examples all over Britain where theatre buildings have sometimes been brought back from the dead, as it were. The Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, which is now open as the city's opera house, was finally rediscovered. It had been used finally as a bingo hall and was bought back by Edinburgh City Council with help from the Government ten or 15 years ago at a total cost of about £12 million. It is in Nicholson Street, not one of the brightest parts of Edinburgh city, so they have done a regeneration job and Edinburgh has got what is now effectively an opera house at a fraction of the cost had they had to start again. One more example is in Stoke-on-Trent. The Regent Cinema was refurbished and converted and extended into the Regent Theatre as part of a cultural quarter in Stoke-on-Trent alongside the Victoria Hall which was refurbished. Again, it is the same idea: it brings people and life back into cities outside normal hours, and of course it helps with other industries. The Very Revd Peter Judd: Churches are often at the centre of villages, towns and cities and the regeneration that they bring is pretty clear, I think. I am thinking, for example, of one of the largest and grimmest housing estates in Salford. The vicar there had a rather run-down little Victorian church for which he got Dykes Bower, the architect for Westminster Abbey, to design a brilliant colour scheme inside. By the time he had finished it, it was an enormous morale boost to the entire community. It was one thing that stood out in this rather faceless estate, and everybody was very proud of it in the end. There are lots of examples like that. Churches are increasingly getting themselves involved in the community, opening their church halls, putting in new facilities that can enable community functions and opening themselves up much more to the community. Q230 Mr Clelland: It was not so much necessarily the congregation, but the multi-use of the building? The Very Revd Peter Judd: absolutely. I have a document here that relates to the churches in my own diocese, cataloguing all the different ways in which they are being developed and opened up to the community. They are often either using their church halls in community use or using the church itself and putting in all the necessary things, such as loos, kitchens and all the rest of it, to enable multi-function use in the community. Ms Griffiths: I just want to add one point to that, which is that the building itself can be quite symbolic. A building in good repair in a deprived area speaks of hope and a future. A building in bad repair speaks of dereliction and oppression and so there is vicious circle and a virtuous circle very often between the state of a church building and the way in which the community feels about itself. Mr Hurst: In inland waterways most of the historic buildings are warehouses, workshops, functional buildings which helped operate the canals in their carrying days. They have been contributing to urban regeneration for over 30 years now. On many sites they have been the catalyst that started renewal. In Ellesmere Port, for example, they had derelict docks and they were brought back because the buildings were restored and they were the focus. You can see all over the canal system that a building or a complex of buildings has been the focus for a regeneration project which has spread outwards, complemented with modern buildings, but they have changed the whole focus of city centres by having a nice old building which people associate with, they feel comfortable with, is an economic project and therefore it starts building up and acting as a catalyst for development around it. Q231 Mr Clelland: What are the major sources of funding that you can draw on in order to refurbish and regenerate these buildings? Mr Hurst: How long is a piece of string? The clever bit is to identify some funding that you can match with some other funding. You can never find a source. There is a question later on this, so I do not know whether you want to go into it now in detail, but there are problems that you have to do this mix and match and find all sorts of different funding streams and organisations who want to put a bit in to match somebody else's, but they all change the rules and the outputs keep changing, so there is an awful lot of time taken up by organisations, certainly in the waterways, and I am sure in the other spheres we are looking at, in trying to find a funding source that will generate the money to achieve the development and the reinstatement that we need. Q232 Mr Clelland: But you have not actually identified any major sources of funding? Mr Hurst: It changes. Currently you have the RDAs which are a major source. Local authorities contribute to them. There are various government funding initiatives. The Heritage Lottery, particularly in waterways, has put an awful lot of money in. It can only fund the heritage aspect of it. It cannot fund a development. European money in various forms has come in and helped, so it is a mix and match from all over the place. Mr Longman: We would probably agree that English Heritage is not able to do as much as it was because its grant has been held, as you know, in real terms. The Heritage Lottery is doing an increasing amount to help theatres, and thank goodness it is, because we do have a fundamental problem in theatres. I talk about a theatre building needing restoring, needing building, and everybody says, "What about the Arts Council?". The Arts Council started by putting in the major part of its Lottery budget for arts buildings. It has reduced that gradually and now gives out less than one tenth of its Lottery budget each year to arts buildings. The result is that at the moment we have about £16 million a year to do all types of arts buildings throughout England and that simply is not enough. When you have the other problem that local authorities, which traditionally used to take the lead 20 or 30 years ago in helping regeneration of arts buildings, no longer have the capital resources to do that, I would say that the Arts Council policy needs to change. It is not that the money is not there. It would be good to encourage local authorities more; it would be good for English Heritage to be able to do more, but please do not turn off the Heritage Lottery Fund tap because they are being very helpful. Ms Griffiths: For churches there is a grant scheme run jointly by English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund for repairs to neglected churches and that is extremely helpful. This financial year it is offering £30 million, which is the highest amount ever, and that is great, but set against a repair need of, typically, £100 million a year for Church of England churches alone, it does not go all that far. It is a bit of an irony in a sense in that the only guaranteed funding for church buildings which comes from government or public bodies is the DCMS contribution to the Churches Conservation Trust. That is for churches which are actually closed but kept in the interests of the estate and the Church because they are seen to be of artistic and historical merit. That is three million for about 300 churches per year. I do echo the point about not turning off the Heritage Lottery Fund tap. The grants we get on repairs are helpful but they are by no means enough. We also have the benefit of the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme which has enabled churches to apply for the difference between 17.5 per cent VAT and the five per cent which we have been arguing should be supported in Europe. That is extremely helpful. It is also very helpful that the Chancellor has now said that there is funding to keep that going until March 2006. Again, if you can think about a small congregation having to go through what is inevitably a bit of a hassle to make an application to get the paperwork together, it would be so much easier if there was just a simple reduction in the VAT. Q233 Mr Clelland: Does it matter whether a theatre is in private ownership, in the ownership of a trust or in the ownership of a local authority, for instance? Does that make a difference? Mr Longman: It does in practice because the Arts Council Lottery and the Heritage Lottery have traditionally made it their policy not to help theatres that are privately owned. There is nothing in legislation to stop privately owned heritage buildings, including theatres, being able to benefit from the Heritage Lottery but in practice I think it is a question of demand on the funds and also possibly the precedent that might be set because if you help one type of privately owned building there are a lot of other privately owned types of building in this country. Q234 Sir Paul Beresford: So presumably, in contrast perhaps to the other witnesses, your particular area of regeneration has an opportunity for bringing in the private sector to a greater degree. How much response do you anticipate getting over the coming financial year? Mr Hurst: I am not a developer; I am a member of an advisory body of British Waterways and similar agencies doing the development, but what we have seen is that the more you can act as a catalyst the more the private developer will come in and put funding in and then take the project on. The basic core is usually done by some government or quasi-government funding in some way or Lottery funding to restore an old building and that is the catalyst to attract the private developer. Mr Longman: We deal with all types of theatres - local authority, voluntary and commercially owned. Commercial owners are being responsible. They are spending considerable sums but one of the problems is that for a theatre as a building type the industry no longer produces enough money to pay for the wholesale renewal or rebuild that is now needed. The commercial owners, for instance, in London's West End are putting in together around three million pounds a year towards improvements to their buildings. A major company like Clear Channel are investing heavily in Sunderland and in Bristol and other places outside London at this moment. The industry does not produce the sort of money you need to pay for wholesale capital refurbishments. Mr Hurst: One thing that is needed to help the process along is continuity. Funding projects and people who fund change in the main every few years so you do not get continuity over a long period. If you could see into the future and the rules did not change then it would be a lot easier for people to take projects forward and get a greater return. Q235 Mr Cummings: I ask this question to all of the witnesses. Could you tell the Committee what contribution buildings in your respective sectors make to delivering social as well as physical regeneration, specifically in terms of education and community engagement? Mr Longman: As I said, theatres are fundamentally places of assembly. They are often a focus of local pride, even for people who do not go to the theatres, and they have fond memories for all sectors of the community. Theatres were traditionally not places where the social elite went. Think of the pantomime and other events, so the re-opening of something like Hackney Empire is bringing in audiences from right across a very deprived part of inner London. It is bringing in audiences of all colours and creeds. Wilton's Music Hall, the regeneration of that down in Tower Hamlets, one of the most deprived local authorities in Britain, is bringing in people from a wide range, working with the local Bangladeshi community, working with schools in the area. A lot of these buildings are run on an amateur or voluntary basis. If there is a petition to save a theatre building on our desks it is very often from the local community who look on it with a sense of pride. Theatres like the Grand Theatre at Lancaster are totally run and owned by the local voluntary community on a voluntary basis. Q236 Mr Cummings: Do you also take your work out into the field? Mr Longman: The work is happening already out in the field. We are simply a very small central London agency establishing good practice, so we do not do the regenerations. The King's Theatre at Southsea, which was run on a commercial basis and failed, is now being run by local volunteers. The Very Revd Peter Judd: Churches and cathedrals usually have an army of volunteers who are working away and we are in the business of building communities. One of the things that we increasingly do is involved with education, with parties of schoolchildren coming round endlessly and working with volunteers to connect with the national curriculum so that the work that is done in the cathedrals and churches which they take back into their classrooms all fits into their curriculum. We also reach out to all levels in society. I am thinking of, in my own area, homeless people and the initiatives that churches together in our town have put together to provide what is not provided by anybody else. All that kind of thing is going on in increasingly busy ways. Ms Griffiths: The churches are effectively the largest voluntary organisation that we have got, and particularly in deprived areas (or in any kind of area) there will already be a community focusing on that building. It may be small, it may be buoyant, it may be depressed, but there will be a focus for people to come together already there. Mr Hurst: In the waterways there are two aspects to it. One is the voluntary contributions, which I will come back to, and the other is that there is a goodly number of small buildings which do not have a major commercial future if restored. Many of those have been restored with grants so that, once the building is there, there is no real on-cost except for everyday maintenance. You have got no capital to pay off. Those have been used in many cases for youth groups, for canoeing, various activities around the canal and for social benefit in the area, and they provide very good benefits. People associate with the building, they like old buildings, they feel comfortable with them and they are very active, usually run by volunteers with a bit of professional help. Around the waterway system there are lots of those. The other thing is that a lot of them have been restored by volunteers and the canals are restored by volunteers, so there is a huge social involvement with restoring canals and using old buildings to assist in the process of getting support. Q237 Mr Cummings: The next question is directed to the Theatres Trust. How do you believe a balance can be maintained between conserving the historically important aspects of saving the buildings and adapting them for modern audiences? Mr Longman: In practice this is not seen as a problem. Theatres were not built as monuments. When most of them were built they were intended to be altered. They used to burn down every 15 or 18 years and they were replaced. The Theatres Trust - let me make this quite clear - is not a preservation body. We were set up by Parliament with two Acts of Parliament to protect theatre use because in planning terms if the site was not there the building was not there and the land, particularly in town centres, would be far more valuable for other uses. If we look at an old building which is not good enough and is not worth saving, then we have no hesitation in possibly advising on alternative uses but we will go for a new building, so we are not a preservation body. In practice we find that it is cheaper very often to restore an old building. Where you get into trouble is when the developers or somebody else come along or they try and do things quickly and cheaply and they take on architects who have not thought about the nature of the building. You need an intelligent, sensitive architect. You need to understand why the building has been listed, if has been listed, and what is important about it. Very often those elements that are important about it are the best bits traditionally. The auditorium of a theatre building is one of the best bits and if you talk sensibly and intelligently to English Heritage and to most local authorities in Britain there is no problem. We have a huge problem in that there are not enough good, well qualified, trained local authority employed conservation officers. We have recently done a study, as some of you may know, on the theatres in London, the commercially-owned ones, to see what was wrong and how they might be improved, and out of the 42 of them there was not one instance where the fact that it was a listed building was the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem was in some of the cases a lack of imagination, but more often it was a lack of money. Q238 Mr Cummings: You have certainly answered one question in relation to the quality of architects. What do you believe is the importance of adapting for other income streams such as conferences, and how can theatres compete with other forms of entertainment, such as cinemas? Mr Longman: In terms of a theatre building, purely in regeneration terms, if there is not a need any more and a new one has not been provided, the buildings which are there and are listed can very often fulfil other useful functions. We helped the architect for Wetherspoons, the pub people, when they acquired the Prince of Wales Theatre in Cardiff. There was no conceivable need for that building to carry on in use as a pub. It is near Cardiff Arms Park and it is now one of their most successful pubs in Britain, and it is a very good example of old and new architecture blending together. There is a marvellous bingo hall down in Brighton. It is now run by Mecca Bingo. It is the former Hippodrome Theatre which was at one time a circus. The London Hippodrome, formerly the Talk of the Town, is now a night club and will probably carry on for the time being being a night club, so we are very happy to look at alternative uses for buildings but, as far as we are concerned, if the building is not good enough and there is a chance of getting a better modern theatre, we will go for the modern theatre. Q239 Mr Cummings: Is there a shortage of high quality architects in this particular field? Mr Longman: No, I do not think there is a shortage of high quality architects. You need several things. You need a client who really knows and understands what they are about and it is one thing to be able to run a marvellous theatre organisation; it is another thing to tackle a building project, certainly of the sort of scale that we are involved in. You need a good architect, you need a theatre consultant and you need money and, as Tony Hurst and other speakers have said, the sheer physical act of getting the money together, the fund-raising, the hoops you need to go through, just about exhausts somebody and takes their eye off the ball of running the arts organisation which is what they are meant to be doing in the first place. There is no shortage of architects, there is no shortage of consultants and experts. Britain has some of the best in the world in those fields. Q240 Andrew Bennett: You are really kidding us, are you not, that some of these old theatres actually offer people the sort of leg room and space they want and the sorts of toilets that are needed for a modern theatre? Mr Longman: It depends which one you go to. If you go to one that has been done up, like the Lyceum Theatre at Sheffield, you will find that sensitive architects were able to re-tier the thing to reduce the numbers of seats, which is often one of the things you have to do. Backstage you can rebuild the whole thing entirely - new stage, new dressing rooms, all of those things have happened at Hackney Empire and, thanks to an Arts Council grant, they applied for the site on the corner so there are extra toilets, there is a lift and disabled access the whole way through. Q241 Andrew Bennett: So how much is conservation and how much is really just opportunism to use an old building for a new function? Mr Longman: I have no doubt whatsoever that if you talked to those responsible at Hackney Empire they would not swap that building for anything because there is something magical and wonderful about the building. Q242 Andrew Bennett: But you have just told me that they have knocked down everything behind the stage. Mr Longman: I do not think the stages are usually the most historic, interesting bits. As I say, they were not intended to be kept in use for ever. They were utilitarian. It is the stage and backstage things that have changed and modernised most over the years. There is a problem about sight lines, there is a problem about knee-lengths, if you like, but a sensitive architect with an understanding of putting the right sorts of seats in can overcome those issues. Q243 Andrew Bennett: Are there not too many theatres, if you look round the country, that are trying to be preserved? Mr Longman: I would not say "theatres ... trying to be preserved". If the question is, are there too many theatres in use, no, I do not think so. They will not all be in use for Arts Council subsidised expensive touring shows. Some of them, like Lancaster, which I mentioned, and Southsea, can be run by amateurs on a voluntary basis. A lot of local authorities like to run or have a theatre and there is still a thriving commercial sector as well. Q244 Andrew Bennett: You mentioned the one in Cardiff being handed over to being a pub. Do you see much more scope for theatres being converted in that way and being a cornerstone of regeneration? Mr Longman: I can give you plenty of examples of theatre buildings which are not currently in use, and I will write if it would be helpful. We call them sleeping beauties. They are fine buildings, they are still there. They may have a potential to come back but in the meantime they can serve a very useful role, whether it as a pub or a club or even a church in some instances. Q245 Mr O'Brien: Mr Hurst, your organisation is primarily concerned with industrial buildings ----- Mr Hurst: With inland waterways. Q246 Mr O'Brien: ---- and with works of engineering designed with a particular purpose in mind. How can their special interest be safeguarded with change of use? Mr Hurst: It has to be by the appropriate people who are in charge of the project and consultant people who have an interest. Q247 Mr O'Brien: You have not got any input into the future design of these buildings when they are handed over? Mr Hurst: Our organisation does not specifically do that. It can comment but it does not specifically have a direct input. Q248 Mr O'Brien: What we are looking at here is urban regeneration. Therefore, if we are to regenerate the urban areas and maintain the main principle of the buildings that we have inherited and the conservation of some of these civil engineering works, does IWAAC or some other body involved with these buildings have some input into the design? Mr Hurst: Yes, a lot of people have an input into its future function and that affects the design. The detailed design is making sure you get the right architect to do the work. The developers and the people who own the building, the people who are going to use the building, are the ones who write the specification. Part of the role of conservation officers and the people who are in charge of that aspect of things is to ensure that the integrity of the building is not destroyed. Q249 Mr O'Brien: How can the special interest be safeguarded then? Mr Hurst: By having the right people doing the right job. Q250 Mr O'Brien: And the skills? Are you satisfied that the right people are there and the skills are there? Mr Hurst: More often than not. Some restorations have not worked. A lot have and have been very successful and have kept the integrity but you can always raise the standards. This comes back to the bit about local authorities. We talked about conservation officers earlier. They have a key role in it. Q251 Mr O'Brien: In the town and city centres we have had wharves and wharving facilities and these are now being dispensed with to build domestic or other buildings. In the interests of urban regeneration is it a good thing to take the wharves away? Mr Hurst: I do not think you can make a general statement about it because it varies. There are an awful lot of wharves that have no potential future whatsoever as wharves and therefore it is not unreasonable to build on them. If you have a major building on that which is linked to the canal and you can find a waterway-linked use for it, that is the ideal, but it is not necessarily so and it may not be sustainable. If you say you can get rid of all wharves then you will get sterilisation and you will not get urban renewal. You have got to carefully pick and match what you want to do in generating income and a new centre to an area in urban renewal and maintaining the integrity of the structure and the waterway. Q252 Mr O'Brien: This is one way of getting materials into a town or city centre and reducing the amount of traffic that would be using the roads. Is that not part of the concern that you have? Mr Hurst: It is, and British Waterways have done that and there are new schemes starting. Q253 Mr O'Brien: Where have they done it? Mr Hurst: There is one down at Uxbridge where they are shifting gravel by water and there are plans for the Thames and other waterways. With the narrow waterways you have got very limited capacity to take heavy goods on the waterway at an economic price. Q254 Mr O'Brien: Any other examples? Mr Hurst: In Yorkshire there are an awful lot of examples of waterways being used extensively for freight traffic. Q255 Mr O'Brien: I am from Yorkshire but I cannot think of any. Mr Hurst: It is a growing amount and I am sure over the next few years there will be even more. British Waterways are being active in getting more. Q256 Andrew Bennett: Is not Gloucester an example of a bit of a muddle between conservation and trying to make the docks function there? It is all right - just say yes. Mr Hurst: I understand where you are coming from but I would not like to make a judgment because I have not been to Gloucester for a few years, so it would be unfair to do so. Q257 Andrew Bennett: Let me go on to the question of church buildings. The Committee went to Norwich recently and there are great claims in Norwich that Norwich has got more medieval churches than almost anywhere else in Britain, and yet 80 per cent of them you could not go in to look at the architecture. Is that not a disgrace? Ms Griffiths: It is a shame, is it not? I think quite a lot of the ones you went to see were probably redundant rather than churches in use. There is a lot more that needs to be done between local authorities and church authorities. Again, picking up the education, in a place like Norwich there is tremendous potential for using the buildings as a reason for people to go to that place and to understand and learn about it. I would hope that there could be encouragement for them to work more closely together. I referred earlier to the Churches Conservation Trust, which is the national body which looks after 330-odd redundant churches. The ones you saw in Norwich would not be looked after by that body. The Churches Conservation Trust have been working very hard to increase access and visitors and the work of the community on the churches which they look after, and in the past few years that has made quite a difference to their own churches. Q258 Andrew Bennett: And churchyards? Are they really designed for winos and other people to hang out in? Ms Griffiths: Again, that is a question of working with the local authority, is it not? Churchyards are terrifically important spaces; that is right. Again, they can give a very negative message if they are not looked after and are inhabited by winos. It is important to work together. Again, in Norwich, some work has been done, and in Ipswich some work has been done in looking at churchyards and putting some money towards them. I agree that more needs to be done. Q259 Mr Cummings: May I address this question to the Church Heritage Forum? In your evidence you point to a number of impressive church-led community projects. Do you think that you could have more projects if local churches were to work more closely with other agencies based at a strategic level, for example, local authorities, local primary care trusts, child care organisations? Ms Griffiths: I am sure there are lots of examples. We quoted in the paper St John's, Hoxton, which was an example of an early 19th century church which ten years ago was creeping with dry rot and desperately in need of renovation. It is now being restored with English Heritage and Heritage Lottery Fund money and there is a children's nursery in the body of the church itself and there is a computer centre and a gym for disabled people in the crypt. That is great, and again that symbol of despair has become a real symbol of hope. I am sure there is potential. It is a question of breaking through the suspicion which sometimes is found with local authorities that the church is different from the rest of the community and that the church is perhaps there to proselytise. Q260 Mr Cummings: Are you actively encouraging organisations to become involved or is this left to parochial decision? Ms Griffiths: There is an increasing realisation that the way forward is ----- Q261 Mr Cummings: Are you taking the lead on this though? Ms Griffiths: Yes, we are. There is a measure going to the General Synod tomorrow, which is called the Amendment of the Pastoral Measure. What this will do is enable a church still in use to lease part of its premises so that, if there is a use which is appropriate, then the owner of that part of that has got some certainty of tenure, which will be a very positive way forward. Up to now it has only been possible to do that by making part of that building redundant, with all that involves. We are looking very hard at ways to encourage better uses and we do see that as a way forward for every church in the community. Q262 Mr O'Brien: The historic churches that we have are large buildings which were built to accommodate congregations of 200 or more. Is there any means of adapting the churches for smaller congregations and for using the church buildings sensitively to increase their flexibility and maximum use? Ms Griffiths: Yes, very often there is, by sub-division and by taking part of the building or an aisle or the back and converting that and using it. It does need sensitivity; that is absolutely right. As was said by the other witnesses, it needs architects with the right skills and people understanding the building and what it can do. There very often is a lot more potential than might be considered. Q263 Mr O'Brien: You will be aware that the Government is reviewing the Ecclesiastical Exemption from listed building controls. Ms Griffiths: Indeed. Q264 Mr O'Brien: How do you se that affecting the future of conversion or assisting with the development of churches? Ms Griffiths: I do not want to pre-judge the outcome of the exemption review, obviously, but I would say that under the Church's existing system where the Church's own legislation is specifically bound to keep a balance between care and conservation of the buildings and their worship and mission it is possible very often, with care and sensitivity and goodwill on all sides, to bring about schemes of the kind we have discussed at Hoxton and elsewhere. The Very Revd Peter Judd: There is a monthly magazine called Church Builder which every month gives you examples of the redesign of the interiors of churches for this kind of use. Q265 Mr O'Brien: Mr Hurst, the development of the historic buildings along the waterways sometimes interferes with towpaths and the provision for people to use the towpath because of private development, expensive development. Is there any way of ensuring that the towpaths are available to the public at all times? Mr Hurst: I cannot think of one recently where a towpath has been closed for a development. Q266 Mr O'Brien: Maybe not closed but diverted then? Mr Hurst: I cannot even think of one of those, but I am sure there is one. Certainly British Waterways do not want to close towpaths. Most of the developments you will find are either at the back of the towpath and there is a bridge across or an arm that goes into them or something like that, or they are on the off-side where there is no problem from that. I cannot think of anywhere where there have been any significant diversions or closures of towpaths. Q267 Andrew Bennett: British Waterways have not exactly been concerned with conservation most of the time, have they, so it has been an uphill task for you; is that right? Mr Hurst: In the early days. It is a changed organisation today. They have developed considerably in the conservation field. I would not say they were perfect but they have changed. Q268 Andrew Bennett: When did they change? Mr Hurst: They have evolved over the years, and I hope that the work that IWAAC has done has helped to make them change into a more reactive organisation in this way. Q269 Andrew Bennett: When Manchester were designating parts of Castlefield and the other bits of the old historic canal centre of Manchester in the seventies and eighties, making conservation areas, British Waterways were pretty horrified, were they not? Mr Hurst: It would not be British Waterways. It would be the Manchester Ship Canal Company. Q270 Andrew Bennett: No, no. Mr Hurst: British Waterways do not own either the Rochdale or the Bridgwater Canal, which were the main areas that Manchester was involved with. If you go back to the early seventies when the Ashton Canal was being planned to re-open with volunteers, yes, British Waterways, up until about 1970 or so, were very against any form of regeneration and sold off their buildings, had a lot demolished and were changing the landscape significantly, but that is a totally different organisation today. Q271 Andrew Bennett: So do we need conservation areas now on these bits of canal or does the organisation do it anyway? Mr Hurst: I think the conservation area work highlights it, puts pressure on and makes people think more deeply about what they want to do in the buildings and how they should do them. The conservation areas are fundamental because listing is fine for a building on its own but it does not look at the whole area. Buildings have much greater importance if they are seen in a historic area rather than just as a building sitting there between a series of modern blocks. Q272 Andrew Bennett: And you feel that the presenting listing system is working well? Mr Hurst: No. I think it needs reviewing, which is being undertaken at the moment. We have given evidence on that and feel that it is not achieving what it should do in many cases. Q273 Andrew Bennett: So should you move from listing individual buildings to much more looking at areas of conservation work? Mr Hurst: I certainly think there has to be a listing of the building but it also ought to take into context other buildings. Structures within the curtilege of a listed building have some protection but it does not seem to do very much. It needs to be more clearly specified and greater power given to that larger area. Q274 Chairman: Can I come back to the Church Heritage Forum? In your evidence you specifically mentioned the Yorkshire and Humberside model. Can you give us a two-minute introduction to that body or scheme and how that contributes? Ms Griffiths: This is called Churches Together in Yorkshire. It was set up following the establishment of the Regional Cultural Consortium. The churches were very anxious to ensure that all the work which they did in the area was fully taken into account by the regional body, so it started with one single faith representative on the Regional Cultural Consortium. For one single faith representative to cover everything that is happening in Yorkshire is quite an uphill task, so what they have done, with some funding from the Regional Cultural Consortium and some funding from the individual churches, is to support that by setting up a bit of a secretariat so that they can pull together information, they can share experiences, they can feed into the kinds of things which are going on in quite a positive way. That is quite clearly becoming a useful force up in Yorkshire to emphasise the work which is going on and to give them a greater presence within the regional decision-making and policy-making. Chairman: Thank you very much for that, and thank you very much for your evidence this afternoon.
Witnesses: Yvette Cooper, a Member of the House, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Rt Hon Lord McIntosh of Haringey, a Member of the House of Lords, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and Government Spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and Michael Seeney, Head of Architecture and Historic Environment, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, examined. Q275 Chairman: Welcome to the second part of this session of the inquiry into the role of historic buildings in urban regeneration. We have had your written submissions. We usually give witnesses the opportunity to make a brief opening statement if you feel that appropriate. Otherwise we can go straight to questions if you prefer. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am perfectly happy to go on to questions. Yvette Cooper: I would like to make a couple of general points. There is a huge opportunity and potential for greater use of historic buildings in regeneration programmes. There are some fantastic examples across the country, whether it is the Albert Dock in Liverpool or Tate Modern and so on, that the Committee will be aware of. I think there is considerable potential for greater use of the historic built environment in the regeneration programmes. The thing that I think is perhaps additional to this is that it is not simply about the physical environment and physical regeneration programmes. The other thing I would add is that local history can be particularly important for community-led regeneration programmes. I will just give one local example of that, which is from my constituency, where a big regeneration focus around an urban renaissance programme has meant that the local catalyst has been a couple of historic buildings and the local community want to get involved because they want to champion the historic buildings. Although in the long run the debate ends up being about everything from the transport system to all sorts of broader regeneration issues, where the new jobs are going to be, what skills needs there are, the interesting thing is that people have been drawn into the process, the local community has been drawn into the process, often by a debate about local history and championing local historic buildings, people's pride in their own local history. I just want to say that the potential for history is broader than simply physical infrastructure. It is also the potential that it has to support community regeneration. Q276 Mr O'Brien: PPG15 is the Government's planning guidance on the historic environment and it refers to the regeneration potential of heritage but that it does not have a strong regeneration focus. Will the draft Planning Policy Statement on the historic environment, PPS15, address the regeneration potential of the historic environment specifically? Yvette Cooper: It is quite interesting when you look at that 1994 document: it does look like a 1994 document. There is only one mention of regeneration and that may well reflect the political climate at the time. It does talk about economic growth and balancing economic growth and conservation, and certainly PPG15 allows you to do all kinds of development in terms of the use of historic buildings for regeneration but a lot of the language feels like it was written ten years ago and it also does not champion the potential opportunities of historic buildings and regeneration. It makes it possible to use those opportunities. Certainly it is something that we would want to look at as part of looking at all of the PPGs. What we do not know at the moment is what the timetable will be for looking at PPG15 but it is certainly an issue we will want to look at. Probably in the meantime, however, you could also look at some of the issues about who PPG15 is used and interpreted by rather than specifically the content of it and what more we could do to get a better interpretation by local authorities, by developers and by stakeholders that have to use PPG15. Q277 Mr O'Brien: So you have no idea when it will be published? Can you give us some indication how it will change, the PPS to the PPG? Yvette Cooper: Not at this stage. Certainly the issue around potential for regeneration is something that we need to look and consider. One of the reasons I cannot give you a timetable is that we are also looking, in the light of the ODPM Select Committee's comments on the ODPM Annual Report, at the timetable for all of the PPG revisions at the moment in the light of your points. Certainly it is an issue we are interested in but, as I said, there is more we can do in the meantime to see what we could do to help local authorities better interpret it or interpret it in a more flexible way to support regeneration in the short term. Q278 Mr O'Brien: Will it be earlier or later, do you think? Yvette Cooper: I cannot tell you that at this stage. I am happy to get back to the committee as soon as we have a conclusion but it is something that the department is still looking at. Q279 Andrew Bennett: This is crazy. We criticised you for not having a timetable and now you are telling us that it is even worse while you consider our report. Come on: you must have some idea whether you are going to get to grips with this before Easter or not. Yvette Cooper: No: I cannot give you the timetable at the moment because what we are looking at in the light of the comments that you raised is the different priorities that should be given to different PPGs. What is the critical question on this one is that ----- Q280 Andrew Bennett: I accept you cannot tell us on this one, but you should be able to tell us when you are going to complete the process. Yvette Cooper: No, I cannot tell you that at this stage. I am very happy to get back to the committee as soon as we are able to do so. What we can do in the meantime is recognise that what this PPG does is set out the need for conservation and regeneration. It does encourage local authorities as part of their process to identify the opportunities for regeneration with historic buildings. I think we can do more in the meantime to support local authorities in the way that they use PPG15 and the best example of that is the work with English Heritage to develop a training package for all local authorities to use in terms of how they can best approach historic buildings and how that can link with regeneration as well, so I think we can do that in the short term, regardless of the PPG15 process, to enable better interpretation of it. Q281 Sir Paul Beresford: When is that going to happen? Yvette Cooper: That is in process at the moment ----- Q282 Sir Paul Beresford: Before Christmas? Yvette Cooper: ----- and is likely to be published this year and there will be a whole series of regional training seminars. The work is being done by English Heritage. I think the ODPM is putting investment into that process and sponsoring that process as well and there will be a series of regional training seminars for people working in local authorities, working in regeneration in different areas. Q283 Sir Paul Beresford: The answer is before Christmas? Yvette Cooper: Before this Christmas, yes. We expect the process to be completed before this Christmas because the regional training seminars need to take place this year. Q284 Mr O'Brien: Your department has issued a draft guidance and a Planning Policy Statement 12 on the proposed Local Development Frameworks. Will the specific guidance on heritage-led regeneration in relation to area action plans and proposals for community involvement be strengthened? You did refer to taking part in something in your constituency, but on the issue of the Planning Policy Statement can we expect further guidance as to the development of community involvement? Yvette Cooper: Yes. We clearly want stronger roles for local communities at an early stage and the Planning Bill sets out that we expect local communities to be involved at a much earlier stage in the development of local plans than has previously been the case. The Statement for Community Involvement, the SCI, referred to in the Bill, is the critical way for doing that. We want to set out more guidance and more information about how that should work and what the process should be. I think that is an opportunity both for local communities to be much more closely involved at an earlier stage and for local stakeholders, and that may involve heritage groups and heritage and historical societies and organisations as well, to be involved at a much earlier stage in the process. Q285 Mr Cummings: The Historic Environment: A Force for Our Future, the 2001 Policy Statement, makes a number of recommendations, 54 in all. Some of these recommendations are relevant to urban regeneration. Would you like to tell the committee what progress has been made on these, for example, on the co-ordination of agencies, equalisation of VAT and the creation of the Historic Attractions Unit? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: We have about ready to be issued in the form of a written statement a list of the progress on the 54 recommendations from A Force for Our Future, and I am hoping that that can come out within the next few days, in other words, while the committee is still considering its remit. Q286 Mr Cummings: So it has taken three years? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Oh, no. We have issued one progress report already, in March 2003, and we undertook to do it roughly on an annual basis. We kept to our commitment last year and we are keeping to our commitment this year as to making a report. Some of the 54 are relatively trivial and some of them are of enormous importance. In particular I would like if I might to draw your attention to the review of heritage protection, the designation review, which we launched after commissioning Geoffrey Wilson and a working party to produce a report on it. We launched it last July. We have carried out an extensive consultation on that. It is of very great importance here because it does propose bringing together the listing of historic buildings and the scheduling of monuments into a single procedure which should be much easier to understand, much fairer for all those involved and continue to provide good protection for historic buildings. We are almost ready to publish a report on that as well. Q287 Mr Cummings: So when do you think you will be reporting on all 54 recommendations? When will that exercise be finished? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: We will report on progress towards all the 54 within the next few days. Clearly there are issues here which require legislation and some of them I cannot say will be completed, but if I look at the list in front of me a very significant number of them are recorded as being completed. Q288 Mr Cummings: This is to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Independent evaluations which are being undertaken on behalf of English Heritage reveal that heritage-led regeneration schemes can be very effective at delivering mainstream regeneration objectives. Would you agree that this is a significant argument for directing more regeneration funding towards heritage-led schemes, perhaps through guidance to the Regional Development Agencies? Yvette Cooper: What we would not want to do is go as far as separate ring-fencing. Where I think the evaluation you are talking about is right is that there are very considerable opportunities for regeneration that often lie in using historic buildings in a different way, whether it be as physical opportunities, beautiful infrastructure or as tourist attractions or redevelopment opportunities in all kinds of different ways, and that often the problem you can have is that things can polarise. You either end up with people thinking that the only option for regeneration is to knock the whole lot down or alternatively the only thing you can do for a beautiful historic building is preserve it in aspic and not use it for anything constructive. What is happening is that there is a big resurgence of the view that comes between those two poles, that you can re-use historic buildings in all kinds of different ways and that this can have huge regeneration potential. There is quite a lot of evidence already that Regional Development Agencies are starting to support this in the programmes that they are sponsoring in different areas and that English Partnerships are now working increasingly on different projects with historical dimensions as well. More resources are going to these different bodies, whether regional development agencies, which are getting increases in investment, or English Partnerships which is getting an increase from £359 million to £493 million next year, or the EPCS whose formula spending share has been increased; and there is also the Planning Delivery Grant. We need to ensure that all these different organisations recognise the economic benefits of using historic buildings in the right kind of way. That is where the training package being developed with English Heritage has very considerable potential, and also some of the culture change programmes that are underway. That is the approach that we are interested to take, to support better information and better skills and expertise for the bodies that have got regeneration money. Q289 Mr Cummings: Do you not think it necessary to introduce more guidance for the regional development agencies? Yvette Cooper: It might be something that we should look further at. At the moment the concentration has been on the training support with English Heritage because that is about providing training for individual local authority officers or people who have to make those decisions and are going to be involving. It is providing training and expertise for them in relation to the kinds of decisions they are going to need to take and the opportunities there are. There is also great potential for demonstrating to people what the benefits have been from other areas; so the fact that other projects have been successful as well. It is certainly something we would consider, and we would be more interested in that kind of approach than the idea of ring-fencing and saying "some of your RDA money ought to go on historic buildings projects". Q290 Mr Cummings: How much more research are you going to require, Minister? We are told that independent evaluations have been undertaken, and they reveal that heritage-led regeneration schemes are very effective indeed; so how far do you intend to carry further investigations? Yvette Cooper: That is why I think the issue is how much impact the training package working with English Heritage can have, because that seems to me to be the most productive area in terms of making progress - providing greater skills and expertise for those involved in making the decisions and those involved in the projects at the moment. We are looking at what more can we do? At the moment, the fear is that a lot of people, whether in planning departments or RDAs do not have the skills and expertise in heritage issues, in historic building regeneration and so on, to realise the potential in some of these areas. If we can provide them with the right kind of training and support packages, that might be the area of the greatest potential gain in terms of making the most of some of these opportunities in the future. Q291 Chairman: Minister, we have heard from the RTPI that some smaller authorities, which perhaps only have a few historic buildings, struggle to justify and provide the resources for having a heritage-led regeneration service. Is there something you can do to encourage the RDAs to provide something that they can buy into at a more local level? Yvette Cooper: There is a problem for small authorities, and it is something that can apply across the board in any area where you need any kind of expertise or specialism. It is why we were keen to support the Planning Development Grant, which allows additional resources to support planning departments. The evidence so far is that some of the Planning Development Grant money is going on conservation-related projects and issues, and getting that sort of expertise. There are opportunities, as you say, to explore some of the regional agendas here. The more that we strengthen the regional planning process the more that we may be able to look at support for local areas; so the strengthening of the regional planning process may be an opportunity there. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Chairman, may I complete the picture by saying something about the funding of the heritage bodies that we sponsor, in particular English Heritage, which Yvette has already referred to. That has a heritage economic regeneration scheme. If I take the last financial year, 2002-2003, that provided matched funding of £9.8 million in 170 schemes; so you can see that a lot of this is on smaller schemes, and presumably quite a lot of them for smaller local authorities. In addition, the Heritage Lottery Fund has the Townscape Heritage Initiative, which is £18 million a year, and a lot of that goes in smaller schemes. Some of these schemes themselves generate private money as well. If you take Graingertown in Newcastle, for example, it was £40 million from public sources, but it generated £80 million of private money. I think that these are worthwhile contributions. Q292 Mr Clelland: Private developers of course have got particular problems in dealing with conservation sites, have they not? They have pointed out to the Committee the difficulties they have in terms of the time, care and attention involved in these sites, and in particular the requirement to submit detailed planning proposals - planning permissions. Is there going to be anything in the Planning & Compensation Bill to reduce these burdens? It does not appear to address this area at the moment. Yvette Cooper: We have said that in the whole Planning Bill process we want to get developers, community stakeholders and so on, involved at the beginning of the process rather than much later down the line, and that helps with this because you get the debate at a much earlier stage. You do not get the problem later on where a local authority is dealing with a plan that is six or seven years out of date, or where it does not have a plan at all and English Heritage only gets involved at a late stage in the process, when there is a whole lot of uncertainty, no-one knows which plan they are dealing with and what the heritage issues will be at a late stage. It makes life very difficult for the developer. Simply streamlining the whole process, making it much quicker for local authorities to update their plans which all of the stakeholders have been involved in at an early stage, will itself bring benefits. We are still looking at the issue about outline planning permission. Keith Hill said in the statement on 15 December that we would consider further the removal of the provision in the Planning & Compulsory Bill that abolishes outline planning permission. We are still looking at that. Obviously, we are going to have to conclude that consideration very shortly because the Planning Bill is going through the House of Lords at the moment. Q293 Mr Clelland: Have you discussed these ideas with private developers, and how do they react? Do they feel you are on the right track? Yvette Cooper: We have had a whole series of discussions with private developers and all sorts of stakeholders on a whole range of issues around the planning bill. Some of the discussions about the outline planning permission have been directly as a result of further representations and discussions with private developers. Obviously, we have still got to make final decisions on that, but certainly they have been very closely involved in a series of discussions over quite some time. Q294 Sir Paul Beresford: In your opening statement you referred to redevelopment and heritage buildings. You mentioned a range of options, one of which at the bottom end - or the top, however you like to approach it - was the use of a bulldozer. Do you sometimes think a bulldozer is appropriate? Yvette Cooper: In the end, that has to be a local decision, as to what the issues are, what the historic building is and its significance. The PPG 15 has always been about recognising the need to conserve our historic legacy, and that his hugely important. It is possible, for example, in a conservation area, that an unlisted building that has no particular contribution to the area could be demolished within a conservation area if the alternative is acceptable. It is possible for local areas to make those kinds of decisions, but in the end it is for that local area. Q295 Sir Paul Beresford: Can I give you a small example? Many years ago I remember looking at Coventry, where there was a 50s/60s shopping area with flats on the top storey, and in the middle of it was this toadstool that used to have a 50s/60s ice cream parlour on it. It was an absolute monster and abomination. It was completely in the way of regeneration, but it had been listed and no-one seemed to be able to move it. I suspect the reason it was listed was that no-one would every build one like it because it was a fool's mistake in the first place, and it was listed because it was unique. I believe that the thing is still there and it should have been bulldozed. In addition to that, the fretwork around the first floor was listed, which basically meant that you could not do anything much with the building itself because of that. A little bit more flexibility from Lord McIntosh might be helpful. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think there is some help on the way - the US Cavalry riding over the horizon in the heritage protection review, in the sense that in addition to rationalising the listing procedure in itself and merging it with the scheduling procedure, it will be possible to look at larger sites and not just to individual buildings. That is useful, for example, for a university campus. Secondly, we want to be a lot more transparent than we have in the past, and we will be looking to having management agreements with the owners, with the people responsible for listed buildings, which will indicate to them in advance, not just waiting for an application, what things are possible to be done with a listed building and what things are not. Q296 Sir Paul Beresford: English Heritage list, but they do not seem to review all of the buildings they have got listed. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It would be a mammoth task. Q297 Sir Paul Beresford: Perhaps they should do it, even so. Perhaps they have got 115 examples of fretwork of something or other from the 1960s ----- Lord McIntosh of Haringey: If I could be sure of getting money from the Treasury for that, yes. Seriously, it would be also a devotion of resources I think. I am not sure that even if I could get the money I would recommend it. Q298 Sir Paul Beresford: If the people doing the Phoenix development had come to your department and said, "we think this is a monstrosity; it ought to come down" and there were 327 examples of fretwork throughout the country, should there not be a reviewing attitude at least? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is already possible. It does happen. Q299 Sir Paul Beresford: How long does it take, though? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It does not need to take a very long time. There is no reason why, when an application is made, English Heritage should not respond to it. In the kind of case you are talking about, 20th century buildings, the Commission on Architecture and the Built Environment will have a view. I, myself, have refused to continue the listing of a building simply because in my view it did not work. Q300 Mr Betts: Two answers have been given together. Lord McIntosh has mentioned the issue of not just one building but buildings in an environment with ancillary buildings, so an area for regeneration; and you also mentioned outline planning permission. Developers in this sort of process have said to me that outline planning permission is most important when you look at this sort of issue where a group of buildings complicate a site, where they are not going to embark at all on the process of putting things together unless they can go for outline permission and get some certainty that the thing is viable from the beginning. Yvette Cooper: That is one of the reasons why we have said we will look at this again as part of the Planning Bill process. However, we want to ensure that you have enough information for the local community to be involved and have a say, and which allows local authorities to assess all of the environmental impacts and things like that; and also to make sure that you do not have a situation where the outline planning permission does not deal with any of the key design issues and is a way of getting round the whole process of discussing design with the local authority or the local community - and mix of use and density issues that probably are the most critical things for local authorities to be able to make judgments on. There have been a lot of anxieties about the outline planning permission process in the past and the way in which it has worked or been abused, and we are very conscious. However, we are equally aware of the representations that have been made, and that is why we are looking at it at the moment. Q301 Andrew Bennett: This is process, is it not? It is all pie-in-the-sky because there are not enough people to do the work, are there? Yvette Cooper: Part of the purpose of the Planning Development Grant was to allow local authorities to have a way to increase their resources to take seriously the planning issues and put resources into the planning process. As I have said, that also includes issues around conservation as well. Certainly the early evidence from the way in which the Planning Development Grant is being used suggests that conservation is one of the things it is being spent on. It is going up from £130 million in 2003/4 to £170 million in 2005/6. It is true that there is always competition for resources; but there is also always competition for professionals and for people to do the work. I think it is an area that we have put increased funding into in order to respond to concerns. Q302 Andrew Bennett: Sir John Eagan is looking at this whole area of skills, is he not? Yvette Cooper: Yes. Q303 Andrew Bennett: When will his report be received? Yvette Cooper: His report is due shortly. Q304 Andrew Bennett: What is "shortly" in your ministerial terms? Yvette Cooper: Obviously, Sir John Eagan is conducting his review, so it is not possible for me to give a final timetable. It is ------ Q305 Andrew Bennett: Just a date ----- Yvette Cooper: It is due to be delivered to the Deputy Prime Minister in early spring. That is the current timetable we are expecting. Q306 Andrew Bennett: The daffodils are out! Yvette Cooper: I know. I am starting to get hay fever so I can tell spring is on its way! One of the things that it is likely to point out is concern about generic skills. Whatever profession we are talking about and whatever the area, these are things around leadership, communication and project work, community liaison and so on. There are concerns about those sorts of skills right across the sector, which I think is interesting. Q307 Andrew Bennett: Is his report going to be in time to feed in to the Government spending round so that there is a chance of having a bit more money to promote people with these basic skills? Yvette Cooper: We would certainly expect it to be in time to feed into the spending review discussions. Obviously, you will know that I cannot anticipate the spending review discussions at this stage. Q308 Andrew Bennett: What about the old situation where a large number of people were able to get jobs with local authorities with in-service training. You could get a degree while you were working in the planning department. What is the Government going to do, particularly with things like top-up fees coming along, to make sure that we are going to recruit enough people going on to academic courses in planning conservation and related professions? Yvette Cooper: The Eagan Review is looking at all of the training issues, and all of the questions about how you get the right kinds of - there are two things: the number of skilled people but also the right skill mix among your staff as well. So all the issues around training and skills development will be looked at, and we will need to respond to that review. The implication behind your question is that we need to be more imaginative about the way in which people might acquire different stages along the way, and the support that might be available for people. I think it is right that we should do that. Q309 Andrew Bennett: It has been put to me that the way in which the National Curriculum makes things like geography optional is not getting enough people wanting to go into planning departments in academic institutions. Yvette Cooper: I think .... Q310 Andrew Bennett: Come on, tell us how many planners you think the country is short of at the moment. Yvette Cooper: I cannot give you those figures. All I can say is that we have recognised that we want to put more investment into planning departments, which is why we put the Planning Development Grant into place. I also think that there is an increased interest right across the community in issues that nobody would necessarily describe as being planning issues, but the sorts of issues that planning underpins, which is the way in which we use physical space in local communities, the way in which the design of local communities ----- Q311 Andrew Bennett: There may be interest, but planning departments are cutting back the numbers of recruits they are taking on, are they not? Yvette Cooper: I would come back to the point that I think we have supported planning departments by increasing the Planning Development Grant, by introducing it in the first place and then by increasing support through that. In the end, local authorities have to make their decisions about how many people they have in which part of the local authority and so on, and that is a matter for local authorities to decide. Q312 Andrew Bennett: If there is a shortage nationally, all that happens is that each one pinches them from the next one, do they not? Yvette Cooper: If you are talking about recruitment shortages in the first place, again that comes back to the Eagan Review and the issues it was designed to look at about the different issues that we need to take account of in order to get enough staff and also the right skill mixes we need in order to deliver on the Sustainable Communities Plan, which is an ambitious plan that raises a whole load of issues that are broader than just historic buildings. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Can I say a word about the special case of conservation officers? We are conscious that a large number of local authorities do not have conservation officers at all. One of the proposals suggested to us in the response to the Designation Review, the heritage protection review, is that we should have closer co-operative between English Heritage and local authority conservation officers, and perhaps work in sub-regional groups. That is likely to be one of the responses we will put forward to the Designation Review. Q313 Andrew Bennett: A shortage of conservation officers or merely a misuse of the existing ones? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not think we have any evidence to say they are being misused; I just do not think there are enough of them and of course it is a very specialist area. Q314 Andrew Bennett: How many are you short? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It is quite a specialist area in which there probably is not much in the way of a career structure, promotion structure. Q315 Andrew Bennett: How many are we short of, then? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not know. Something like 40 per cent of local authorities do not have conservation officers. Q316 Mr O'Brien: Both the ODPM and the DCMS this afternoon have drawn attention to the innovative work of English Heritage and the fact that English Heritage can contribute so much to our local communities. Why is their budget being cut? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: English Heritage are going through a modernisation process which is designed to take them away from being a hated regulatory body to being a body that is more open to their customers. If you look at their baseline grant in aid, which includes the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, their original - that was cut. If you go back to 1996-97 it was £117 million. It went down by 2001-02 to £110 million, but the projects are £115.4 last year, and £121.7 this year and next year and the year after, so it is not being cut now. Q317 Mr O'Brien: It is not being increased with inflation, is it? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: After an increase ahead of inflation, it is not being increased with inflation. Q318 Mr O'Brien: In real terms it is being cut. On the question of the importance of English Heritage in helping communities bringing forward innovative schemes, how can this be done by reducing the number of people who are performing those duties? There has to be a point somewhere, do you not think, where ----- Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It is not actually reducing the number of people who are helping in the front line. One of the great things about English Heritage is the way in which the new management there has recognised the need to increase their front-line services. That is why they have regionalised their structure and cut out a good deal of the central bureaucracy. If you look at the English Heritage annual report, for example, it is all on a regional basis; and it is much more accessible to the people who need it than it was. Q319 Andrew Bennett: This Planning Delivery Grant, the jewel in the crown: how many extra employees has it produced? Yvette Cooper: I cannot tell you that. We have some early research into the impact of the Delivery Grant that suggests that the performance is improving and that the grant is providing a positive incentive for the quality of the work. We are looking at ways to measure the quality in the Planning Delivery Grant allocations, and looking at consulting on two "best value" indicators that might be able to help measure quality more explicitly in planning. The evidence so far - and it is still early stages - is that this is proving a very positive innovation. The sum of £50 million was the extra for planning for this financial year and £130 million for the next financial year and £170 million for the following financial year, so it is a significant increase for local authorities directly for planning. Q320 Andrew Bennett: It is slightly immoral, is it not, because the worse you were as a planning authority the more money you have got to improve, or the easier it was to improve, and therefore you got money? Yvette Cooper: It is set out as an incentive for improvement, and they have to maintain that improvement. Q321 Andrew Bennett: It is easier if you were terrible ----- Yvette Cooper: It is probably even more important that those local authorities get their acts together and improve the performance of the local planning departments. I think it is right that it should support an incentive, rather than simply be a blanket allocation. They have to improve in order to get the money and keep the money as well. What is critical is that we find the right way of measuring both improved performance and progress into the future, so we are going to need to look at that. Q322 Andrew Bennett: But you get credit if you get the planning application in and you refuse it, rather than take some time to consult and get it approved and amend it. Is that right? Yvette Cooper: That is why I mentioned the best-value indicators. We have a current consultation paper on best-value performance indicators, and we have proposed two new measures for the quality of planning services. One is a quality checklist indicator, which scores authorities on the processes to deliver quality outcomes. That asks a specific question about the adequacy of advice on conservation matters as part of it, but we are consulting on that at the moment. It is not a simple thing to measure, and it is very easy to measure the speed by which planning applications are dealt with; but we should not underestimate the fact that speed is an important factor, and huge long delays in the planning system can cause immense problems right across the local area. Q323 Andrew Bennett: So what is the increase in the number of planning appeals in the last two years in percentages? Yvette Cooper: I do not have those figures but I am happy to send them to you. Q324 Andrew Bennett: Are you aware that there has been an increase in the number of planning appeals? Yvette Cooper: As I say, I do not have those figures in front of us. Q325 Sir Paul Beresford: Could you give us an indication, when you write, of the delays? Yvette Cooper: Do you want information specifically on appeals? Q326 Andrew Bennett: The suggestion is that in spite of you believing that the grant is a marvellous thing, that actually it has had some perverse effects, one of which is that people are refusing applications rather quickly in order to meet your current criteria; and that has resulted in a significant increase in appeals, and one of the reasons I thought that the planning inspectorate was failing to meet their target of speeding up all the planning applications; so if you would let us have those figures, that would be helpful. Yvette Cooper: Let me send you then some more information about the issue of appeals and also about the early research we have in terms of the impact of the Planning Delivery Grant and the best-value performance indicators and measurements of quality for the future as well. Q327 Mr Cummings: The Committee has discussed the areas of overlap between English Heritage and CABE, and it has heard evidence that suggests that this overlap has produced confusion within the development community. If that is the case, then should we not be looking towards combining agencies to make the process of regeneration simpler? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The short answer is "yes". There is overlap, and we recognise that. It has been dealt with in the past by ad hoc arrangements for joint working. For example, English Heritage has the design task group with the Commission on Architecture and the Built Environment, and that seems to be working. CABE is working with English Heritage on what are called characterisation studies, which comes back to what I was saying earlier about treating localities as meaningful entities. There is a joint English Heritage CABE body called the Urban Panel, which is providing advice on major regeneration schemes. All of those are being applied, but it is true that there are too many bodies, and I am personally committed to simplifying that as far as possible. Q328 Mr Cummings: In what timescale, Minister? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: A lot of it would require legislation, and there are no public timescales for legislation - no private timescales either! Q329 Andrew Bennett: The EU put the boot in to gap funding as far as heritage projects are concerned. Has that been sorted out yet? Yvette Cooper: We have got approval from the European Commission for a historic environment regeneration scheme, and that does allow funding bodies such as the RDAs, English Partnerships and local authorities to provide grants for up to 100 per cent of heritage-related development at cost within the state aid rules. Since getting the approval we have been working with the funding bodies to get a guidance note in place on supporting projects under the approval, with the aim of being able to give people much greater clarity about the way the heritage gap funding would work. Q330 Andrew Bennett: Is that guidance note now available? Yvette Cooper: It is currently with some of the practitioners, and some of those have been involved in it just for feedback at the moment; so we have a draft in place. Hopefully, depending on the comments, if we get very strong responses which say it is not clear enough in particular ways, then we will have to do more work on it. At the moment, we have a draft in place, and we are waiting for some feedback on that from different practitioners. Q331 Andrew Bennett: The spring? Yvette Cooper: I would not want to commit to a timetable until I see the response we get back. If we get a favourable response, then hopefully it would be as fast as possible. Q332 Andrew Bennett: A lot of the schemes - you started off with the Albert Dock, and there is a lot more you can mention - almost all of them needed EU structural funds. Is it going to be a major problem if the structural funds disappear or are phased out? Yvette Cooper: Obviously, the structural funds are in place until the 2006 round, and the spend will still be there until 2008. We are obviously in some negotiations to try and get the best possible deal for the UK out of the further ongoing negotiations about structural funds; and we all have to accept that there are consequences from the enlargement of the EU, which is obviously something that we support. At the same time as those negotiations have been put in place, we have put in place a long-term system for expanding funding through the regional development agencies, funding that is available through that single pot and through other organisations as well. I think we are alive to the long-term issues surrounding structural funds and the importance of those. We are still in negotiations with the EU about what will happen. Q333 Andrew Bennett: Is there a possibility that they might replace putting up some money for these schemes with a directive? We have the EU Habitats Directive, which you can argue has done a pretty good thing for the natural environment. Is there the possibility that the EU will become involved in the whole of this area? Yvette Cooper: It is too early to say. Q334 Andrew Bennett: Do you think it would be a good idea for them to get involved? Yvette Cooper: We have obviously put forward proposals around allowing different countries to contribute to a net fund to support a lot of the incoming countries, but then also to allow individual countries to be able to support strong regional regeneration within a framework of rules or a framework agreement that would be endorsed by the Commission. Other countries have different proposals on the table, and the Commission itself has different views on this, so we are at too early a stage. We would expect an EU-endorsed framework for that kind of approach, but I think we are too early to say exactly what form that should take. Q335 Andrew Bennett: Which spring do you think that might happen? Yvette Cooper: Well, it is now 2004. The current spend obviously runs from 2000-2006, so it is an area where negotiations are underway. Q336 Mr Clelland: Lord McIntosh referred earlier to the Graingertown project, which is in my constituency. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is why I said it! Q337 Mr Clelland: It is a marvellous job. Everyone applauds the work that has been done there. However, the biggest needs in a city like Newcastle, and in other urban areas, is in social regeneration. I do not know whether Lord McIntosh is aware, but in Graingertown we had the first million pound apartment in Newcastle following the refurbishments, which may say something about the success of the regeneration. On the other hand, to some extent it feeds the criticism that physical regeneration often leads to the gentrification of an area that is in conflict with the social regeneration. Is there anything we can have from you, Minister, as to how we can bring these two areas together so that this conflict no longer exists? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It is undoubtedly a fact that if you change the character of an area completely - let us take something that was not planned like Hoxton in Hackney - that happened, and artists took over. The rents and house prices then take off, and the original inhabitants are driven out. If you do that without providing for a mix of community and a mix of different kinds of people in a regeneration area, then you will get exactly that, whether it is publicly funded or privately funded, which is a strong argument for the kind of thing that is happening in large parts of London, which is insisting that there should be affordable housing in any regeneration effort. Q338 Mr Clelland: If you are in a conservation area, for instance, that is easier said than done, is it not? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Yes, but if there is any possibility of redevelopment or change of use, then it is possible to insist on affordable housing; and if that is done then the gentrification process - I am not saying it can be wholly avoided, but it can be mitigated or slowed down. Yvette Cooper: There is a series of ways in which you can attempt to sustain a mixed community, which is what the aim should be. Clearly, there are benefits from the existing community if people want to move back into an area, and you have different people with different levels of income and different backgrounds wanting to move into the area and helping to regenerate an area in that way. We all know some of the problems with areas of low demand where everybody wants to move out, and how devastating that can be, especially when you reach the extremes of the housing market collapse. Turning that round and bringing people in can be a huge benefit and a critical part of the regeneration process. It is certainly something in the housing renewal pathfinders that part of the plan is not only to regenerate social housing but to regenerate the private housing market and draw people back in to encourage people to want to buy houses in those areas. Inevitably, that has impact on house prices and so on if you are successful. The question is, what you can do to prevent the worst-case scenario, which is that the people who have lived there for a long time - the people whose families have been in that area for a long time - feel they are being pushed out or priced out from a regeneration programme. As Andrew said, it is easier where it is a public sector-led regeneration programme than when it is the kind of thing that just happens when you get the private-led regeneration. But even where it is privately led, as Andrew said, there is a lot you can do within the planning system in terms of insisting on levels of affordable housing within housing developments and so on, in order to support those mixed use communities. By putting the idea of sustainable development into the Planning Bill, on the face of the bill, we are reinforcing the idea that we should be developing mixed communities and not these big isolated communities. There should be mixed tenure and mixed levels of income of people living in an area, and we should be actively aiming to support that. If there is public sector investment in the programme then you have even more flexibility; you can use some of that investment in order to safeguard business premises for small businesses, for business start-ups and particularly those from regeneration areas from low-income backgrounds as well as supporting social housing in the area. The housing market renewal pathfinders have a specific remit and that is an important part of the work they are doing, so it would not be possible for them to simply go off down this track of leaving the existing community behind. Equally the growth areas have, as part of their remit, issues around affordable housing and mixed community development. In those areas where we have big investment going in and a lot of public sector involvement, there is a lot of potential to prevent the kinds of problems you are talking about, or the extremes of the problems. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Can I just add one sentence, a very sad comment? When I was Chairman of the Development Control Committee in Haringey forty years ago, the mantra was "non-conforming use" and we were driving out all the kinds of things that we want to sustain now in order to have mixed communities. I hope we have learnt that lesson. Q339 Chairman: Minister, we heard both from Manchester and Liverpool how difficult they found it to use compulsory purchase powers, which they saw as essential to stimulating urban regeneration. Do you think that is fair criticism, and, if so, are you planning anything in the bill that is currently before the house to address that? Yvette Cooper: We do have proposals in the bill that deal with compulsory purchase powers in general, and making those simpler and easier, speeding up the process particularly where there are no objections and people do not have to go through the full inquiry. That should help in some ways. I have not had a chance to read the Manchester evidence myself, although I did have a briefing note which suggested they were concerned about compensation and people raising issues at inquiry that were about compensation rather than the principle of the scheme. Is that right? Is that the kind of concern they were raising? Q340 Chairman: They suggested to us rather that having to have very detailed proposals and a developer ready to go was a challenge sometimes. Yvette Cooper: Certainly, as part of the broader changes to the compulsory purchase system, they will not have to show both that the land is suitable and also that it is required for the project underlying the scheme. Instead, they will be able to justify the compulsory purchase just on the basis that it is carrying out development, re-development or improvement which they think will be of economic, social and environmental benefit to the area. So that provides greater flexibility in terms of the overall CPO powers. I do not know how far that addresses their concerns. Q341 Chairman: It goes some way, I would imagine. Are you disappointed at the use of the CPO powers that you have given to RDAs? Yvette Cooper: I think the RDAs are still at an early stage in their work, and some of the land procurement issues are complex. We have been trying, as part of the bill, to recognise there are difficulties with the way the CPO process works at the moment; that it needs to be speeded up and made easier. We need to get out of a lot of the difficulties and bureaucracy from the process and make that more flexible. That should make things easier in the future, whether at local or regional level. Q342 Mr O'Brien: Both English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund makes grants to aspects of the historic environment, sometimes duplicating. Is there not an argument for unifying the grants regime with respect to the historic environment? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I have already touched on the answer to that question. I think that there is a degree of overlapping. There are things that you can do about it in the short term: I mentioned the joint working arrangements; I could have referred to the strategic memoranda of understanding which English Partnerships have with English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, so there is a good deal you can do. But if you were going to make more radical changes, as I said earlier, some of that would require legislation. Q343 Mr O'Brien: Could something not be done through orders in Parliament to try and streamline the organisations and ensure that there is no duplication of grants? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think the organisations are doing an excellent job with the remit they have been given; but I do not disagree with you that there are areas of overlap. Q344 Chairman: In terms of co-ordination, the 1990 Town & Country Planning Act and the Listed Building & Conservation Areas Act were done in tandem. We have got major changes to the planning system involving primary legislation; are you anticipating doing something on the heritage front in the near future? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: In so far as the work we have been doing on the designation review affects that, yes, we are. When we come to publish the responses to our consultation, I think there will be some quite positive things to be said; but, again, I have to say that some of them would require primary legislation. Q345 Andrew Bennett: I thought the principle of the Lottery was that it was not to be a substitute for government expenditure. You are telling us that in putting these two grant regimes together English Heritage will have a bit less money and you are going to make it up from the Lottery. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: No, I did not say that. There is still the arm's length principle for the Heritage Lottery Fund, and that will be maintained. If anything, there might be a move towards a more arm's length principle for other bodies. Q346 Mr Betts: Thinking back to the Heritage Protection Review consultation, the period for consultation ended on 31 October last year. When are we going to get the Department's response? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Very soon. Q347 Mr Betts: Next spring? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Crocuses rather than daffodils! Q348 Mr Betts: My crocuses are rare! Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I cannot do it in terms of birds! Q349 Mr Betts: At the same time you put your question, will you publish a template for taking what action you can? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The response will be looking forward. I think the current jargon is "direction of travel"! It will be looking forwards rather than backwards. Q350 Mr Betts: But with an idea of timescale attached to it as well? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: If we can do that, yes. Q351 Mr Betts: There are ideas around having a unified list, but there is a suggestion that that might need an awful lot more by way of resources to implement it properly. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not think it is primarily a resource issues. It is a powers issue. The problem is that under primary legislation the Secretary of State has the ultimate responsible. She has the power to delegate the implementation of that responsibility as long as there is a right of appeal to her, but that is an issue of how we implement the existing legislation. I do not think it is necessarily an issue of requiring extra resources. Q352 Mr Betts: You could unify the list to one whole and ----- Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Obviously, there are one-off costs in any changes you make of this kind. I would not anticipate that the resulting system would be more expensive. Q353 Mr Betts: It is an issue you would be examining as part of ----- Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I would go so far as to say we would not do it if it were going to be significantly more expensive. Q354 Mr Betts: Turning to the position of the spot listing of buildings, which sometimes can hold projects up almost at the last minute; have you any ideas of how that issue might be resolved and how your department might respond to whatever process you think is appropriate? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The problem that has been identified by spot listing is when English Heritage has not done its homework and does not know that there are regeneration projects in the offing, and therefore has not looked at the particular buildings in the area; and they recognise that they ought to be able to anticipate the needs of the requirements brought about by a regeneration project in advance, and therefore not introduce a spot listing at a late stage. However, I have to say I do not think spot listing is altogether a bad thing. If it had not been for Geoffrey Ripon spot listing buildings all round Covent Garden, it would have looked like Victoria Street now. Q355 Mr Betts: Do you think it could be a bit more proactive rather than simply reactive? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think English Heritage recognises that if it anticipates that there is going to be regeneration activity in any particular area, it ought to be ready in advance with a view to what listing is required. Q356 Mr Betts: Finally, perhaps both departments could reflect on this. Very often, local authorities retain local lists, which do not have any statutory basis at all; but often the buildings on those lists are the ones that the professionals might sneer at rather, but which the local community rather likes. Are there sometimes some that ought to be saved, rather than the examples that Sir Paul has given to the Committee; and how do we resolve that sort of issue? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I know what you mean. The responses to our review I think will show that people value local lists but that they do not wish national lists, for example grade II buildings, to be transferred to a local list simply because there is a lower degree of protection for them. Q357 Mr Betts: How do we deal with that at local level. There is virtually no protection at all. It is all very nice because it is on the local authority's list, and that is it; when it comes to an application to remove it, it gets removed. Yvette Cooper: If it is not a house, then obviously it has to go through the planning process as normal anyway, and so local authorities can take account of a whole series of material considerations and the impact on the community of the possible use of a building and so on; so local authorities can take that into account. Sometimes the concerns can arise over private houses where it is possible under the permitted development order to go ahead with demolition without applying for planning permission and without there being any control at all. Concerns have been raised about that, and it is one of the issues we have looked at as part of the General Committee Development Order Review. We have very recently received the research on all of the permitted development orders, which looks at this among other issues; and so we will be responding to that shortly. Q358 Mr Betts: Will that response tie in with the whole look at the Heritage Protection Review that DCMS is doing, so that we have some sort of ----- Yvette Cooper: We will certainly make sure that on any of those related issues we do that. Q359 Chairman: Everyone is aware of the arguments in favour of equalisation of VAT at 5 per cent. Is this an issue that you are continuing to press the Treasury on, resolving the issues with Europe, et cetera; or are you proposing any other fiscal measures that might encourage the repair and maintenance of historic buildings? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It is an anomaly. It is the case, and the churches in particular press it on us, that repairs and maintenance to listed buildings attract VAT at 17.5 per cent, whereas alterations are zero rated, which encourages people to alter them rather than to repair and maintain them. The problem is that annex 8(h) of the 6th VAT Directive is very precise about this; you cannot make any changes to this without unanimity. There are exceptions that other countries have used, but they are quite limited. They are limited, for example, to social housing or social policy or housing with a social policy - something of that sort. We have very considerable derogations from VAT in this area. For example, we do not have any VAT on new buildings, and we would be very unwilling to risk some of the advantages we have got, despite the anomaly. We have therefore dealt with it by an interim grant scheme, which particularly for listed places of worship, which the Chancellor introduced in 2001, pays by grant the difference between the 5 per cent rate and the full amount. That has produced more than £16 million since it was introduced in 2001. It is not ideal. Chairman: It has been a long session, but it has been very helpful. Thank you very much for your evidence. |