Examination of Witnesses (Questions 268
- 279)
TUESDAY 18 APRIL 2006
HERITAGE LINK
Chairman: Could I welcome now Anthea
Case and Kate Pugh of Heritage Link. Your organisation represents
82 different heritage bodies and I am sure trying to get them
all to speak with one voice is not an easy task, but it is important
there should be some kind of co-ordination and therefore we were
especially keen to hear from you. Can I ask Philip to kick off.
Q268 Philip Davies: Many of the submissions
that we have had, including from some of your own members, have
focused on the role of the DCMS in promoting heritage within government
and many have been critical and said it is a small department
and does not have the influence within government to do that effectively.
What are your views on the efforts of the DCMS in promoting and
representing heritage within government? Would you like to see
any change in the way that they do represent heritage in government?
Ms Case: I think you have probably
yet to meet an interest group who thought that the government
department that it looked to did its job exceedingly well, but
I think you are right to say that there is a widespread feeling
among our members that DCMS do not represent the heritage strongly
enough across Whitehall and indeed outside. Our perception—and
I think it is difficult to measure this—is that even within
the DCMS heritage, the built environment, and the historic environment
is not "Top of the Pops" as it were. If there is a hierarchy
of bits of the department we do not think the historic environment
is tremendously high there. Even more worryingly I think we see
its impact outside in areas where our members are involved, particularly
with the kind of agendas which the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister runs, as being extremely limited. Evidence for that goes
back to A Force for Our Future which was the Government
response to the English Heritage Report Power of Place.
Part of that was to set up a network within government departments
of green ministers taking responsibility for heritage issues in
those departments. That seems to us not to work at all and not
to work at all because the DCMS has not put effort into making
it work, if I can put it like that.
Q269 Philip Davies: Just to clarify,
would you prefer heritage to continue to be represented by DCMS
in government and that they just do it a bit more vigorously or
would you prefer that the responsibility went to a more heavyweight
government department like ODPM given its role in planning and
the fact they took over the promotion of heritage altogether?
Which would you see as the best option?
Ms Case: I think in all machinery
of government, wherever you draw the boundary there is difficulty.
Boundaries always cause difficulty. If you look at the views of
our members, on the whole what they would really want is for the
DCMS to pursue the historic environment with more energy and with
a broader perception of what the historic environment is and what
contribution it could make to modern society, together with some
mechanism so that getting historic environment issues on to the
land use planning agendas of ODPM, Sustainable Communities, in
particular happened because there was somebody in that Department
who took an interest in it. If I can give you an example of where
we feel the DCMS are letting the sector down, ODPM are pursuing
an agenda about community ownership of assets. Our members represent
building preservation trusts and are heavily engaged in that kind
of area and yet it took one of our members to put pressure on
David Miliband to get historic environment represented in the
working group on that subject, rather than DCMS taking the initiative
and ensuring that the historic environment as one of its sectors
was represented. It is that type of slipping between two stools
that we would like to see addressed and like to see addressed
because somewhere in the DCMS there was somebody who was really
championing the historic environment and the benefits of investing
in it across the field.
Q270 Philip Davies: In your memorandum
you state that "our deep concern is that while sport, museums
and the arts have had financial recognition from government, the
appreciation by government of the historic environment is too
shallow." Why do you think that the Government have not been
providing stronger financial support to the sector? Do you think
in our world of political correctness it might be perhaps because
you do not reach out to as diverse an audience as some of those
other sectors do? What is your view on that?
Ms Case: Can I put the bit about
the diversity of the audience on one side for a minute. I will
come back to that. I still think there is a perception that the
heritage is somehow not modern, fuddy-duddy, technical, the quotation
that you used earlier on from David Lammy about "experts
talking to experts". I do not think that the DCMS, and particularly
David Lammy, actually believed that. I hope we have gone some
way to persuading him that that is not the case, but I think there
still is a perception in the DCMS that the historic environment
is about sites, about things with fences round them, things you
go to visit, so they can think about it in the same way as they
think about going to the theatre or going to a sports event. You
can then count the numbers of people going in, tick access boxes,
and get the Brownie points from doing that. If you take a wider
view of the historic environment and treat it as what surrounds
you as you walk from your home to the shops or as you walk from
your home to school, the things that make up an identity of a
community, it is much more difficult to tick the boxes and therefore
I think it is much more difficult to make the kind of case which
says, "We will fund it provided you get your visitor numbers
up from X to Y." It goes back to the point we made in our
memorandum about whether the DCMS really understands that the
historical environment is wider than sites and things that you
visit. Turning to the point about diversity and access, in one
sense if you believed it is walking down the street, the historical
environment is probably the most democratically accessible cultural
set of assets that there is. You can see it as you walk outside
this building. You are engaged in the historic environment. You
may not understand it but you can understand it and it is part
of what you do. Where we are talking about sites and things that
have visitors, I think that it is right to say that perhaps we
have been slower than some other cultural sectors to take up the
challenge of getting more diversity in our audiences. One of the
things we hope to do this year, and we have got some funding from
English Heritage among others to do this, is to try and do some
research and to do some practical work with heritage bodies across
the regions as to what good practice is and how they can learn
how to do it better. I think that has been rather slow in coming.
Q271 Paul Farrelly: I want to get
on to English Heritage on a similar line of questioning but before
that I want to follow up Philip's line. I have a great deal of
sympathy for the logic of having planning and heritage issues
in one department, but then I think of personalities and personalities
drive priorities, and if the ODPM is all about relaxing planning
laws to allow people to build even more whacking great distribution
sheds because it allegedly contributes to economic efficiency,
that is going to conflict with the role of people who want to
tighten and make more effective planning regulations. I would
fear for that sort of outcome because priorities come back to
people at the end of the day. Chris Smith was the last person
who should be negotiating with an entrepreneur, shall we say,
like Ken Bates about the make-up of Wembley Stadium in his kitchen
with no-one taking notes, but there was no doubting his passion
for the arts and heritage. Can you now in either the ODPM or in
the DCMS say to us that there is one minister there who you are
really confident in who has got heritage really right at the top
of their agenda, as you might have said with a person like Chris
Smith? Can you give me a name?
Ms Case: I hope we are encouraging
Mr Lammy to take that role but I could not say with my hand on
my heart that he is yet taking it. In terms of what he is saying
he is beginning to say some of the things that we would expect
somebody to say who was going to champion the historic environment.
Q272 Paul Farrelly: And in the other
big department ODPM, is there a name?
Ms Case: No.
Q273 Paul Farrelly: Sadly no?
Ms Case: Sadly no.
Q274 Paul Farrelly: English Heritage—after
all the structuring, cutbacks and pressures that they are under,
do you think they are and can be now a really effective lead for
the heritage sector? If not, if you had a wish-list what could
be done to improve the situation?
Ms Case: Yes, I think they can
be. Yes, I think they need to be. I think that they have been
hamstrung by two things. One is reorganisation and change and
I think that inevitably with any organisation makes it rather
inward-looking, reduces morale, reduces the certainty of people
inside the organisation but also certainty outside the organisation.
In one sense my wish-list would be that they would be allowed
a period of peace and quiet, as it were, to get on with doing
the job which has now been set them, which is a more strategic
focus for the future. Thinking about coming here today, in my
previous incarnation I nearly always sat here with the Chief Executive
of English Heritage. In the time I was at the Heritage Lottery
Fund, there were four different Chief Executives of English Heritage.
That does not make for consistency, it seems to me, in how an
organisation develops. The second thing I think they need to be
more effective is more money. It is as simple as that. I do think
that the things that they are now trying to do, a lot of which
are about being more outward looking, trying to engage with other
people and other agendas, are things that actually depend on making
relationships and growing relationships over time, and I think
that was one of the things that English Heritage has done not
terribly well in the past. Again going back to your earlier conversation
with Liz Forgan, when the Heritage Lottery Fund opened its doors
it was quite clear that people on the ground in the heritage—local
history societies, that sort of group—did not know where
to go to to get advice. My feeling was that the Arts Council and
sports did know that there was a thin dotted line that ran from
the local societies up through the regional arts councils to HQ.
If you take the Local Heritage Initiative scheme, which has been
tremendously successful and which my members certainly want to
see continued, the hand-holding was done by the Countryside Agency,
it was not done by English Heritage. Is English Heritage now saying
that if the Countryside Agency is not going to do it we are going
to do it? That seems to me something that if you are serious about
outreach and enabling people on the ground to flourish and getting
a wider audience for the heritage and wider participation, you
would want to do.
Q275 Paul Farrelly: Another horrible
phrase "modernisation"—and, Kate, you might want
to come in on this as well as Anthea—English Heritage has
been through one of these modernisation programmes. What precisely
has that achieved?
Ms Pugh: It used to be very well
respected for its research, its conservation and its personnel.
I know that some of our members would cite examples where the
expertise is now spread extremely thinly. For example, the Association
of Gardens Trust says that there are only five landscape specialists
and the Battlefields Trust says that it is only 10% of one man
across the whole of English Heritage and across England. Although
they are obviously fighting for their own particular specialisms,
I do think the support that specialist voluntary organisations
are getting from English Heritage is getting scarce and very thin
on the ground, and as heritage itself gets wider and wider that
is one gap that is emerging now. I think on the personnel there
has been a lot of restructuring and the latest restructuring has
lost some extremely long-standing, experienced personalities there
which is a shame. It is a different world; we have to move on.
Q276 Paul Farrelly: So perversely
then modernisation has been a success because it has got rid of
lots of historical expertise, but that surely was not the intention?
Ms Pugh: They were very well-respected
officers who took voluntary redundancy.
Q277 Paul Farrelly: We have also
as MPs of all parties, particularly since the last Election, been
having to put up with across many spheres "permanent revolution",
a concept we thought had gone out in the 1920s with an ice pick.
The Government seems to be changing everything and now we are
doing this inquiry in anticipation of yet another shake-up. Is
there a case for any more change or is there a case for bodies
now that have been modernised and changed to be left alone to
develop?
Ms Case: There are two key public
sector bodies in the heritage field. One is the Heritage Lottery
Fund and the other is EH. My feeling would be that they are both
now sufficiently efficient, slimmed down, whatever the right phrase
is, to enable them to stay as they are and to go on doing what
they are intended to do. The judgments which are made about them
ought to be about what they deliver, not about how they are internally
bureaucratically structured.
Q278 Paul Farrelly: We do not want
this purely to concentrate on English Heritage. We heard a reference
previously to Northern Ireland and the shambles there. What about
Scotland and CADW in Wales? Can you say a few brief words in your
experience about the situation in Wales and Scotland?
Ms Case: I have to say my own
experience on Scotland and Wales is not as up-to-date as it used
to be. When I did deal with them, each of the three statutory
bodies—CADW, Historic Scotland and EH—was very different
and in some senses I think that Historic Scotland both benefited
from and suffered from the fact that instead of being a non-departmental
public body and therefore at arms' length from the Scottish Executive,
it is an agency, and it therefore was less good, if I can put
it like that, at being seen as the independent leader of the sector.
I think the same to some extent is true of CADW. The other thing
to bear in mind is that both of them operate in a much smaller
community, if I can put it like that. It may be a joke but when
you go to Cardiff everybody knows everybody, as it were, you are
not dealing with nine English regions. So I think that the jobs
that they do are rather different.
Q279 Chairman: Your body came into
existence really in response to complaints from the Government
that the sector was too disparate and there was no coherent single
voice, and you obviously are attempting to provide that. Do you
feel that having set up Heritage Link it is listened to by the
Government?
Ms Case: I would challenge your
first assumption that it was set up in response to complaints
from Government. I think it was set up because when the voluntary
sector organisations in significant numbers sat round the table
to do the work which led to Power of Place they realised
that they were not punching as hard as they could because they
were sitting in different silos and not talking to each other.
I think that Heritage Link is genuinely the creature of a will
from the voluntary sector rather than a response to complaints
from the Government. Whether we are having and how significant
an impact we are having, I do not know. I think we are beginning
to have an impact. I do not make enormous claims because I think
any new organisation inevitably takes time to learn how to do
the job that it was set up to do. I think there was a period at
the beginning of Heritage Link's life where the members took time
to learn how to work together, if I can put it like that. I think
we are now doing that and perhaps Kate can illustrate that.
Ms Pugh: Yes, I think over the
last few years there have been definite signs that there is a
culture of working together, which is really encouraging. I see
that in several different ways. One of them is the co-operation
we now get for signing joint letters and responses to consultations
on particular issues. This used to be quite difficult just in
terms of office procedures but as people get used to this they
are much more willing to do this faster, people are keener, they
know that we will take the response forward and they are looking
forward to having that help. We always try to show some added
value and that in particular has come true. I think that there
was some scepticism perhaps that we were going to supplant their
campaigning activities but that is not true. We are always saying
it is as well as not instead of their own responses. That is one
area where there is a lot more co-operation and understanding
of our role. The second is the interest groups that are now emerging
under Heritage Link itself. There are various groups already there.
The membership is 80 strong. There are the working groups which
concentrate on land use, planning, inclusion and funding. Those
bring together certain elements of the membership and under those
there are six projects this year, again bringing together people
with a particular interest in funding or fund-raising skills or
inclusion issues. Under that formal level there is also a new
brand of interest groups emerging in response to a Government
initiative like the Education Task Group or the Rural Heritage
Task Group, both responding to consultations and drawing together
certain sections of the membership. Also the members are making
up the groups themselves now. There is interest from other areas
to come together and swap ideas, join up and act together. I think
that is partly an influence that Heritage Link has had. We also
facilitate interest groups like skills. We facilitated a workshop
with Creative and Cultural Skills Sector Skills Council and also
with the Europa Nostra. They offer a platform for members with
interests to come together and they are certainly taking up those
opportunities. I think the culture of working together is both
at national level and at regional level because we also run regional
networking events which bring the voluntary heritage sector together
at regional level. Those are certainly areas where I see an impact
that we have made.
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