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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