Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport First Special Report


Appendix 2 - Reply from English Heritage

Submitted by Dr Simon Thurley, Chief Executive

I understand from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that it has been agreed that English Heritage and other bodies should respond separately to you on the recommendations in the Committee's Fourth Report, and that these will then be published collectively.

Only one of these recommendations, No.11 is relevant to English Heritage:

We therefore recommend directly to English Heritage that it reconsiders its abandonment of historic ships. We believe its raison d'etre - helping to protect the historic environment - encompasses, by definition, the protection of the historic fleet. (paragraph 35)

English Heritage Response

"The conservation of historic ships is, as the Committee recognises, a very expensive business. At the time that English Heritage withdrew from the funding of historic ships conservation we did so because our grants budget was already under pressure and we felt that the sums we were able to make available were unrealistically small in the face of demand even from the small number of ships we were then helping. Our grants budget is now under even greater pressure and in the light of the very large new stream of money available from the Heritage Lottery Fund it would make no sense for us to move back into this area of funding. We must continue to choose our priorities very carefully to match the limited resources available to us."

29 April 2005


 
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