Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 319)
TUESDAY 25 APRIL 2006
ENGLISH HERITAGE
Q300 Paul Farrelly: Do you not think
that there might be a danger of degradation because there may
be a minority perhaps of frustrated owners of Grade II* buildings
who face more restrictions under that category in what they want
to do with those buildings than if it slipped down to Grade II?
Sir Neil Cossons: Well, we do
not think so, Simon, do we? We have looked at this in some detail
and we believe it is a good move in the right direction.
Q301 Paul Farrelly: There is sound
evidence that it would not be a degradation?
Dr Thurley: In practice, there
is no difference between a Grade II* and a Grade I building in
terms of the consent regime. Both are referred to English Heritage
for advice at the moment. I actually own both a II* and a Grade
I and, I must say, I have not noticed any difference in what I
have to do with the local conservation officer.
Q302 Paul Farrelly: I am not even
lucky enough to own a Grade II thankfully! The question was not
between II* and I, but between II* and II in terms of degradation
potentially, a building slipping down.
Dr Thurley: There is no suggestion
that there would be large numbers of II* buildings that would
be, as it were, relegated to Grade II. However, it should be said
that the proposals would involve effectively a re-Listing of our
Listed building stock and we would have to write new List descriptions
of every single Listed building and that would result in some
buildings that are currently Grade II being promoted to the new
Grade I and possibly some buildings that are currently Grade II*
being, in your words, relegated to the new Grade II, but that
is something we should be doing anyway. That is something that
we actually ought to be looking at because some of the Lists are
quite old and need rewriting and looking at again.
Q303 Paul Farrelly: Who would be
doing this work?
Dr Thurley: Well, the current
proposal is, and of course the White Paper has not been published
so we do not know whether the Government is going to take this
or not, that in the future, if this were to go ahead, as Listed
building applications came in, they would have new List descriptions
written for them, so there are about between 30,000 and 35,000
applications a year for Listed building consent and the aim would
be to rewrite the List descriptions of each of those buildings
as they came up.
Q304 Paul Farrelly: What about the
present stock?
Dr Thurley: The present stock
would be covered under that, but they would only have their List
descriptions rewritten if the owners were to apply for Listed
building consent.
Q305 Paul Farrelly: It is a potentially
amazing amount of work.
Dr Thurley: It is a potentially
huge amount of work, but the benefits would be enormous because
one of the other problems that we have is that the List descriptions
very often do not make it clear why a building is significant
and that actually does give problems for the owner because the
owner is not fully aware of what he can or cannot do, what is
important about his building and what is not important. Particularly
when looking at buildings at risk, when looking at, for instance,
churches, which we may want to come on to later, the List descriptions
do not make it clear what adaptations to a building would actually
be acceptable and what would not, so the new List descriptions
will make, I think, everybody's lives a lot easier because it
will give much greater clarity about what was important in a building
and what was not.
Q306 Paul Farrelly: You have also
been running pilot projects to test the wider reform proposals
and I think there is a concern out there and with us that some
of these proposals may lead to, in particular, more unfunded burdens
for local authorities and would also place a demand on skills
that frankly are lacking at the moment. Can you just tell us a
little bit more about the pilot programmes that you have been
testing and what conclusions you have drawn so far?
Dr Thurley: The DCMS have actually
just commissioned a piece of work by a man called David Baker
to have a look at the pilot projects and you may have seen his
report. I certainly have, I was reading it last night. The overall
result of his analysis of the situation is that there is a general
view that these types of arrangements will be beneficial in the
long run, but we have got 20 and we have chosen some quite different
and quite difficult cases and there are quite a lot of things
that we need to do to make sure that they are working properly,
but the overall view of the DCMS's own research, which we welcome
and support, is that they do have considerable potential to make
life more straightforward and in the long run actually to save
money.
Q307 Paul Farrelly: Potential in
the long run? In the long run clearly we are all dead, as the
famous phrase says! What about the short-run implications?
Dr Thurley: Well, like many things
and many management agreements, you have to put a lot of effort
upfront to negotiate the agreement before you get the benefits
at the end, so if you take one of the examples, which is the Holkham
Estate which is a big, historic estate in Norfolk, actually setting
up the management agreement will take several months of negotiation
with the owner of the estate, with the local authority and with
us and that is a significant investment, but once that agreement
is in place, it means that all three parties have to do far less
work. The difficulty of course with the system is that to get
these things in, you have to put in money, time and resources
upfront to save money later and that is quite often the nature
of trying to make things more efficient.
Sir Neil Cossons: The philosophical
framework within which those pilots are exemplars is entirely
based on our belief that conservation is best served by going
for a managed solution rather than an adversarial one and that
involves, as Simon says, input at the beginning in order to achieve
savings and I think greater sign-up and buy-in later on because,
as managed processes, if we take the Piccadilly Line, for example,
which is one of our pilots, we will become more familiar with
handling what are quite complex buildings and so will the owner
in terms of his understanding of what their conservation entails.
Therefore, an intensive period at the beginning we believe reaps
benefits later on.
Q308 Paul Farrelly: Do you have an
estimate of the financial burden that you will incur through that
and also the financial burden upfront that local authorities will
incur?
Dr Thurley: That is part of the
research that is going on at the moment. We do not know and I
think we have to be quite open about that, that we do not know,
but it should be set in the context of our own activities because
what we are increasingly trying to do is what we call `pre-application
work'. In other words, we are trying to come to agreement with
owners before their application is submitted to local authorities
as to the benefits and disbenefits of any particular scheme, so
our own case work right the way across the board we are trying
to move forward before the applications come in so that, when
the applications come in, it is simply a question of ticking them
through. This is part of a wider trend and it is expensive in
the short run because in the short run you are both doing the
pre-application stuff and you are doing the, as it were, post-application
stuff, but that bulge of work theoretically, and I believe it
will happen, will pass and we can deal with most things in pre-application.
Q309 Paul Farrelly: What do you think
local authorities should be doing in particular to prepare for
this? Where are they lacking in expertise? My local authority
has lost its conservation officer because he has gone to go and
tout for developers and that is a pattern that is affecting many
other local authorities which are pretty much cash-strapped around
the country.
Dr Thurley: I think the first
thing that should be said is that both the Baker Report and another
report which has been commissioned by the DCMS from Atkins has
shown that the local authorities broadly welcome the concepts
behind HPR. There are anxieties, as you rightly say, about resources
and we too have anxieties about resources. We do know that there
are local authorities who see the historic environment service
they provide as being of low priority and we do know of a number
of local authorities at the moment who have lost staff exactly
as you say. Clearly this is one of the issues that will need to
be resolved and worked through in the timescale of the White Paper.
Q310 Paul Farrelly: One of the reasons
my local authority has lost staff is because it is a two-tier
authority and we are at the bottom of the food chain when it comes
to everybody else snapping up everybody else and not least because
of some of the regeneration quangos that the Government has secured
around the country, so at this time of major setting up of other
structures of regeneration, we are setting up another set of reforms
and, too right, there are going to be pressures on the resources.
How do we resolve that?
Sir Neil Cossons: Well, in the
generality we have been encouraging the appointment of heritage
champions amongst elected members in local authorities and there
is considerable sign-up for that and we bring heritage champions
together from time to time to provide at member level a fuller
understanding of the values of the historic environment and of
the role of the local authority in it. One of the advantages we
have is that there are the best and the rest of course amongst
local authorities and the best are very, very good. They can themselves
provide outstanding exemplars of best practice, so there is a
better sign-up and understanding on the part of elected members
which we see as an important part of our work to encourage, train,
assist and then the training of officers as well in which we would
see it as a very useful part of our work to help the capacity-building
capability amongst local authorities as a means not only of putting
the responsibility down to the local authority level where it
should be, but preventing feedback into our own offices of issues
that are essentially local issues that should be determined locally.
Q311 Paul Farrelly: Do you and the
Department, working together, actually have an up-to-date picture,
a snapshot, of current capacity and levels of expertise by, for
example, local authority conservation officers and also archaeologists?
Dr Thurley: We know the broad
picture across the country. We know that on average there are
1.7 conservation officers per authority and each of those has
to deal with about 1,200 Listed buildings and about 30 conservation
areas. That is the sort of average picture across the country.
There is a whole series of bits of research done by an organisation
called ALGAO who are the Association of Local Government Archaeological
Officers. There is also work by the IHBC, the Institute of Historic
Building Conservation, but there is no comprehensive once-and-for-all
piece of research that tells us what the situation is. I think
that you are right in pointing out that there is a problem. The
sort of skills that we need from people now are very different
from the skills that were needed before. We do need people with
a much greater awareness of issues of regeneration, a much greater
understanding of the economics of the market and we need people
who not only have archaeological skills, but also skills in historic
buildings, and the training that exists at the moment does not
really give us that. We do have a number of schemes and projects
on the go at the moment to try and make sure that in the future
the right sort of people will be turned out by the training institutes,
the colleges and the universities, but right now there is a shortage
of the right sort of people.
Q312 Philip Davies: Just before we
move on to heritage protection, can I just ask if you think there
would be any additional protection for World Heritage sites specifically
and, if so, what that might look like?
Sir Neil Cossons: Yes, I think
we do feel that World Heritage sites deserve better than they
get at present. The designation of World Heritage sites is of
course material in the planning process, so to that extent they
are better regarded than would be an equivalent area that was
not a World Heritage site, but, as we refine what HPR might represent
in detail, I think certainly we need to look at what provisions
there are for World Heritage sites and determine what is possible
and practicable. I do not think we have a more detailed view on
it at this stage.
Q313 Philip Davies: In terms of funding,
virtually every submission we have heard and received has noted
that your funding has gone down and pointed out how damaging that
has been to their particular organisation. Could you tell us what
arguments you are putting forward to the DCMS to secure a better
settlement in the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review?
Sir Neil Cossons: Can I set the
context for the funding of English Heritage because I have been
Chairman for six years and one of the things that I was asked
to do by the then Secretary of State was to bring together representatives
of the wider historic environment sector to report back to government
on the management of the historic environment and that appeared
in the form of a report called Power of Place. One of the
things that we discovered, what many of us had known, but now
had serious evidence of, was the lack of quantitative data right
through the historic environment area. Much of the argument in
support of the heritage historic environment has been based on
emotion and not enough of it on sound evidence. One of the results
of Power of Place was that there was a government response
of course and we have been each year producing an audit of aspects
of the historic environment called Heritage Counts and
that is for the first time giving the Department, ourselves and
the wider heritage sector the serious evidence that enables us
to make a persuasive case. Even more recently the Department's
own participation surveys indicated the levels of engagement with
the historic environment on the part of people at large. I think
one of the big issues that we have all had, and it is common to
the sector, it is common to English Heritage and it is common
to the Department, is that we have not been serious enough in
the way in which we have engaged with each other in terms of the
arguments that we can deploy, so in the run-up to 2007 we feel
confident for the first time really that we will have the quality
of information available to us to make a persuasive case.
Q314 Philip Davies: How confident
are you that that will be listened to and that you will actually
get a much better funding settlement or do you think it will fall
on stony ground, your request for more funding?
Sir Neil Cossons: I am confident
that it will be listened to, but I do not know how stony the ground
is going to be and that of course applies right across government
in a whole range of areas. What I am confident about is that the
nature of the relationship in terms of our mutual understanding
of the wider issues in the historic environment between the DCMS
and ourselves is better now than it ever has been and that, I
think, must be good for both parties.
Q315 Philip Davies: Well, I hope
that it does not fall on stony ground, but, if it does and the
worst comes to the worst and your funding continues to decline,
where would the cutbacks in services be most likely to be made?
Dr Thurley: We have, as you know,
a published strategy and we have costed that strategy so that
we have the resources from the current spending round to fund
that strategy. It is one that we have agreed with government.
If, for some reason, we do not have the resources to achieve everything
on that, we will have to have the discussion with, first of all,
DCMS, but then after that ODPM and DEFRA as to which of the things
in our strategy they regard as being less important and we would
have to stop doing those things. I do not think we have ourselves,
as it were, a hit-list, but we would have to discuss that with
our funding partners.
Q316 Janet Anderson: You have gone
through some fairly major restructuring in recent years. I wonder
if you could just tell us in what way you feel that the modernisation
programme has made English Heritage a fitter organisation and
perhaps you could also tell us a bit about what has happened to
staff numbers since, say, 2002?
Sir Neil Cossons: In the generality,
the modernisation programme in English Heritage, which has run
over the last five or six years, has, I think, made us a much
fitter organisation, fit for purpose in terms of the changing
needs of the historic environment and enabling us in particular,
I think, to focus on the key areas that are priority areas for
the historic environment in general and, therefore, for us. That
has meant that we have had to change the nature of our people
in order to be able to have expertise in areas which in some cases
we did not have before and to be a little more relaxed in some
areas where we might have a mismatch, but what I think we have
now got is an organisation which is very closely attuned to the
needs of the wider historic environment market and that is a good
thing. It has also, I think, given us a quality of flexibility
that we did not have in the past and we have, I hope, been able
to protect the particular quality by which we are most valued
by most of our partners and that is the quality of our expertise
because it is that core of knowledge which feeds into all our
work, into our grant-giving, into our statutory work, into the
operation of our properties and into the advice that we give to
others. That has been something which we have been very keen not
just to protect, but to move on into areas where we know we were
weak, and one thinks, for example, of education and outreach as
an example where we were decidedly sub-standard and we now believe
we are up to scratch. Simon, you could probably fill in some of
the detail on that.
Dr Thurley: I do not know how
much detail the Committee would like to hear, but I think that
in terms of principle what we have been trying to do is become
more, as it were, people-focused rather than buildings- and archaeology-focused
and recognise that the only point in having these wonderful sites
and monuments and the wonderful history of our country is because
people can enjoy it. I think there is always a tendency with an
organisation that is full of experts for the experts to concentrate
on what they really know about which is bricks and mortar, the
stratigraphy in the ground and roofing materials and all the things
we are expert in, and what we have to realise is that this is
only valuable because people value it and at the heart of our
changes has been a reorientation in that direction, so we have
taken out a lot of bureaucracy and we have had a lot greater focus
on regional delivery. Constructive conservation that I mentioned
earlier has been a major part of that, trying to work upstream
with planning applications, talking to people before they put
their applications in rather than waiting for them to come and
us just saying, "Well, we don't like it". That has resulted
in about 11% of our staff turning over, so we lost about 11%.
Quite a few of those posts we replaced with different types of
people, as Sir Neil said, but at the end of that I think we have
got a body that is able to work in what I describe as a more constructive
way, and that is what we were trying to achieve.
Q317 Janet Anderson: I certainly
think that the regional emphasis is very welcome indeed and, as
a Lancashire MP, I very much welcome that. What has all of this
done for staff morale, the staff you have now? Has it had an effect?
Sir Neil Cossons: I think there
was a drop, and there always is when uncertainty exists in an
organisation. One of the things that we were very keen to do was
to reduce the period of uncertainty during the modernisation process
so that we could feed back as quickly as possible into the new
structure and, in particular, to the people who were going to
be an integral part of the new arrangements clarity and certainty
as to what the arrangements would be that followed on from that.
My feeling is that the organisation is in pretty fit fettle across
the board.
Q318 Janet Anderson: Some people
think that English Heritage tried to spread itself too widely
in many ways. I am just wondering in what areas have you found
the greatest danger of conflict between your many different roles
as regulator, as adviser to government, grant-giver, et cetera,
and how do you manage those potential conflicts? Is it something
that you would like the peer review, which has been recently announced
by the Minister, to address?
Dr Thurley: One of the reasons
behind our modernisation programme was the quinquennial review
that was completed in 2000 which actually raised many of the issues
that you have just mentioned and our modernisation programme was
very much in response to that and it was trying to make our internal
management much, much clearer. There was what then was called
`matrix management' where everybody sort of did everything. We
have now managed to separate the functions and we have got much,
much clearer responsibilities and accountabilities through the
organisation, and that does mean that we are far less likely to
find ourselves in the circumstance where our various different
functions actually conflict and, in areas where they might conflict,
we have put in place various mechanisms to make sure that we can
sort that out before it gets too difficult. Of course the most
important thing we have done is the preparation, submission and
agreement of our strategic plan which makes very, very clear and
public how our resources, £165 million of resources, are
being divided up between those various areas of responsibility
and the plan makes provision, as we go forward, to continually
look at that balance of resources and to continually ask the people
whom we work with whether that balance is actually right and,
if it is not right, it has provision for us to move resources
around to make sure that we can put them where the needs really
are, so I am pretty happy with that at the moment.
Q319 Janet Anderson: Do you think
the proposed review is a good idea or do you think it might cause
unnecessary delay over the expected White Paper?
Dr Thurley: I think the review
is excellent. We jointly commissioned it with the DCMS. We have
spent quite a lot of taxpayers' money; we have spent over £13
million on our modernisation programme in terms of redundancy,
in terms of new IT systems and in terms of all the things we have
done. I think it would be quite improper for us not to have a
thorough review to see whether the criticisms that were levelled
at us in 2000 had been met or not, so we and the DCMS are absolutely
at one in thinking it is a very good thing.
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