Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
1 NOVEMBER 2004
MR ADAM
WILKINSON, MR
TERENCE BENDIXSON
AND MR
TONY TUGNUTT
Q1 Chairman: Welcome to the first evidence
session of the Urban Affairs Sub-Committee on the role and effectiveness
of CABE, and thank you very much for coming this afternoon. For
the sake of our records, could you say who you are, please?
Mr Bendixson: Terence Bendixson,
representing the Chelsea Society.
Mr Wilkinson: Adam Wilkinson,
Secretary of SAVE Britain's Heritage.
Mr Tugnutt: Tony Tugnutt, Chairman
of the Bloomsbury Conservation Area Advisory Committee.
Q2 Chairman: Would any of you like to
say anything brief by way of introduction or are you happy to
go straight into questions?
Mr Wilkinson: Straight into questions.
Q3 Mr O'Brien: In your submissions, in
your evidence submitted to the Committee, you are critical of
CABE. Would you say that, overall, CABE has made a positive contribution
to improving the design of new development?
Mr Wilkinson: I would not say
that in relation to historic building specifically. There are
many examples we have come across where CABE has not taken any
cognisance of the surrounding environment with developments, which
result therefore in a bad effect on the historic environment in
the setting of these developments.
Q4 Mr O'Brien: If there were any changes
that you could make, or suggest, in the way that it is operated,
what would they be?
Mr Bendixson: I think they need
more expertise on the Design Review Panel in the fields of building
conservation, architectural history and planning—those aspects
of expertise which touch on the conservation areas and historic
quarters that we represent.
Q5 Mr O'Brien: Mr Bendixson, your Society
says: "Ways must be found to make the design review process
more open." What do you mean by that?
Mr Bendixson: We are in the midst
of a very interesting exercise at the Royal Hospital, where CABE
has been involved and delivered a really excellent review of what
the Royal Hospital proposes. So far, the Royal Hospital has not
paid any attention to those excellent proposals and so something
awful is still about to happen. I think we ask ourselves the question,
if CABE had been more open, if CABE had been in a position to
make public its views on this important national site and the
problems that it sees, might not things have changed rather more
quickly? At the moment we may still be heading for a disaster.
Q6 Mr O'Brien: On that point, if you
are saying that they should have had more consultation, how can
CABE work effectively with local amenity societies, resident groups
and organisations like yours?
Mr Bendixson: I would hope that
in future they might invite us to take part in their review deliberations.
I would hope too that in cases of national importance they might
promote seminars of interested parties in the district where the
case occurs.
Q7 Mr O'Brien: In your evidence you suggest
that sometimes the process of design review can become merely
the expression of one group of people's taste over that of another
group, or one style over another style, and therefore you could
have conflict within an open meeting, as you suggest. How could
that be avoided so that the decisions of those discussions were
constructive?
Mr Bendixson: I do not think the
decision would be made at the public meeting. You are absolutely
right, different people have different taste and taste might become
a dominant theme at a public meeting, but I think it might also
tease out all sorts of other, important local knowledge about
the appropriateness of a development for a historic site or a
historic quarter.
Q8 Mr O'Brien: Who should chair such
a meeting?
Mr Bendixson: CABE.
Q9 Mr O'Brien: You say that the conflict
which could exist between the various groups should be decided
by CABE as to resolving such a conflict?
Mr Bendixson: I think we are still
talking about CABE's design review and this would be a widened
process of design review, but I think therefore that CABE still
should be managing it and Chair of it.
Q10 Sir Paul Beresford: If CABE took
a role that you are suggesting for the Hospital site, is there
not a risk nationwide that CABE will start to dictate design and,
effectively, overrule local authorities, local individuals, people
who are elected locally to make the decisions?
Mr Bendixson: I understand your
point very well, but I do think, judging by the experience we
have had so far, that a strong distinction needs to be made between
design review, "Is this a good building, is it a building
that's fit for its location, is it a building that's going to
work?" (questions with which CABE has rightly concerned itself,)
and the concerns of the local which involves questions like, "Is
this a suitable development for our city? or suburb, or whatever?"
There is a difference between fitness in design and fitness in
development and I think these two stages of the process enable
the problem you have identified to be resolved.
Q11 Sir Paul Beresford: Do not frighten
me. I think it is the other way round. Effectively, the scene
is set before the local authority has even touched it, if your
suggestion is carried forward?
Mr Tugnutt: That is a particular
concern that we have, that in fact developers will approach CABE,
and it is quite clear from the audit report that far more people
are approaching them than really they can cope with adequately.
I do not blame developers, because obviously it is in their interests
to get CABE on side and so they will have discussions with CABE
at a very early stage and then they will approach the local authority
and they will already have the comfort of the support of CABE,
albeit informally. Effectively, as I said in our evidence, the
scheme is sewn up before ever it hits the street.
Mr Wilkinson: Unfortunately, in
doing this, this is clear in "Design Reviewed", the
document which CABE produced, they are not necessarily paying
attention to national policies affecting planning or historic
environment, and so the comments they are coming forward with
are being used to argue against national policy. They state this
quite clearly on page 17 of that document, where they ask the
question "Do CABE's views about projects take into account
national and local planning policies and guidance, planning and
development briefs and so on?" They say: "we are not
primarily concerned with evaluating projects against criteria
of this kind" and that seems like a fairly arrogant thing
to say. It is quite stunning really that a national organisation
which has an input into the planning system, an input which is
valued by planning authorities, should be able to come up with
these comments when everybody else in the system is working within
the guidelines set down in policies.
Q12 Chris Mole: I think you have covered
the ground in terms of the engagement with local people but, in
terms of looking specifically at the historic environment, why
is that something you will expect CABE to be doing? Should not
the contributions from English Heritage and the local authority
conservation officers be sufficient to cover that dimension of
a development?
Mr Wilkinson: I do not think you
can look at any development solely in its own right. In this country,
every square inch is covered in something historic, somewhere,
and much of it is quite valuable, in fact very valuable, and needs
to be preserved, but it does not exist alone. It acts with the
buildings around it and new developments need to interact and
work with it, otherwise you get very sharp cut-offs, you get townscape
which does not work, you get the mistakes of the sixties repeated
all over again, this terrible wiping out of town centres. Indeed,
we have been involved with a number of quite large cases recently
which have seen town centre development which would not necessarily
wipe out historic areas but which would have a huge impact on
historic areas. If you look at the buildings which are being proposed
purely in terms of their design and not just in terms of the surrounding
environment, the potential to do damage is enormous.
Mr Tugnutt: The consultation letter
from the Department says specifically that one of the criteria
for referral of cases to CABE is those cases which affect views
into or outside a World Heritage Site. I have submitted the CABE
minutes of the Effra Tower, and I did that because that 50-storey
tower just down the river at Vauxhall would affect this place,
it would affect the Palace of Westminster World Heritage Site,
views of it, it would appear over Westminster Abbey and above
the Cenotaph in views down Whitehall. If you look at those minutes
that I have submitted, the World Heritage Site is not mentioned
once. It is the Government which has put that responsibility onto
CABE to comment but it has proved incapable of doing so.
Q13 Chris Mole: It has got those requirements
but how do you think CABE could give more weight to the interests
of the historic environment?
Mr Bendixson: I think really by
changing the personnel on the design review panel. I am sure that
is a very important step which needs to be made. Perhaps also
the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister needs to review its advice
to CABE because, for instance, the submission that the Office
made to you, and it is in your report, makes no reference to historic
quarters, historic buildings, or anything like that. In a way,
it seems as if the department is not fully aware of this aspect
of CABE's work.
Q14 Chris Mole: How do you think it can
get access to the expertise it needs on historic environment?
Mr Wilkinson: I think it needs
only to ask. The expertise is out there in numerous societies
and organisations, I am sure they will be all too willing to help.
It can also do perhaps with having some expertise at the level
of its Commissioners. There are no Commissioners who have expertise
in historic environment. There is an archaeologist perhaps but
no-one who deals with the conservation of historic buildings up
at the top level of the organisation, and that is worrying.
Q15 Chris Mole: Looking specifically
at Housing Market Renewal Initiatives, there is a prospect of
substantial demolition of old residential neighbourhoods. How
do you think CABE should balance the interests of the historic
environment with its new emphasis on neighbourhoods in its corporate
strategy?
Mr Wilkinson: There is another
factor to count in there, which is hugely important, which is
the people who live in these historic neighbourhoods who want
to see them preserved. Currently we are dealing with a case in
Darwin, in Lancashire, where 150 two-up/two-downs, which people
live in, own and love, which are 150 years old or so, are threatened
with clearance. In those sorts of cases I think there is a real
case to go out there and look at what is there, first of all.
The people dealing with design review or dealing with the whole
Pathfinder policy up there, from CABE's point of view, need to
go to see these buildings and talk to the local people about their
heritage, about the buildings they love and like living in, before
starting to work up some new designs for the local authority,
which may not have consulted the local people adequately, in many
cases they fail to consult them properly at all.
Q16 Andrew Bennett: Surely with most
of the Pathfinders there is a very obvious problem, is there not?
People do not want to live there and that is why they become Pathfinders,
because people are moving away, there are very substantial numbers
of empty properties, so you have got the evidence of what local
people think, far more effective than going to talk to them because
people are moving out?
Mr Wilkinson: I have to say that
all the cases which we deal with are only ones where people actually
want to fight to stay. In all those cases, which so far are about
five or six across the North of England, or north of Stoke-on-Trent,
at any rate, there are people who live in these areas and who
really do want to stay there, and the houses which are empty are
owned very often by local authorities and property speculators.
The CPRE put together a very thorough report called "Useless
Old Houses" which looked at how you can improve these areas
without demolishing historic buildings, and the first thing is
to get the local authorities to do the simple things regularly,
such as emptying the dustbins once a week, for example. It is
the simple things, carried out over time that pick these areas
up. Unfortunately, with Pathfinder, in a few cases it seems local
authorities are going for a quick hit at the cash to knock down
the buildings and build again. Indeed, the excuse of creating
brownfield sites has been used in Liverpool as a reason for demolishing
these buildings.
Q17 Sir Paul Beresford: Do you feel there
is a risk that your position could be taken as criticising CABE
because they have a different opinion, therefore you want them
to change to fit your opinion?
Mr Wilkinson: Certainly that is
something which has been levelled at us by Peter Stewart, from
CABE, when he wrote to us over the case at Berwick-upon-Tweed,
which I highlighted in our evidence. In that case, yes, there
was a difference of opinion, but also the reason there was a difference
of opinion was because the process by which CABE came to its opinion
was flawed, there was no input from historic environment experts.
Q18 Christine Russell: Can I ask you,
Mr Wilkinson and Mr Tugnutt, do you actually agree with what Mr
Bendixson said, which is that everyone serving on the design review
panel should be changed?
Mr Bendixson: No, not everyone.
My point was that there should be an enrichment.
Mr Wilkinson: Yes, absolutely.
I think there should be an enrichment of people on the panel.
Q19 Christine Russell: Would you describe
what you mean by that?
Mr Wilkinson: At the moment, if
you look through the list at the back of the "Design Review-ed"
publication produced by CABE, there is a list of all those who
are involved in design review and if you go through the list there
is not one person there who has expertise in historic environment.
There are architects and engineers and architects.
| 
