Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320
- 339)
TUESDAY 25 APRIL 2006
ENGLISH HERITAGE
Q320 Chairman: You, therefore, see
the review as really an assessment of the modernisation programme
that has taken place, not as a review to make a recommendation
for further radical change?
Dr Thurley: The terms of reference
are not to make recommendations for radical change. I think that
the review comes at an extremely good time and it will coincide
with the report of your own Committee and I think that the review
will give quite a lot of weight to what this Committee finds.
It will be an opportunity to build on the improvements that we
believe we have made and to see whether our partners whom we work
with right across the country believe that we are improving.
Q321 Chairman: Are you concerned
that it may be another attempt to try to find efficiency savings
to allow you to spend more on front-line services rather than
actually increasing your grant?
Dr Thurley: Well, we have no problem
about making efficiency savings. In fact we rather pride ourselves
that we have become a very, very efficient organisation. One of
the reasons we have had to become efficient is because we have
not perhaps had the grant-in-aid that we wanted, but that in a
way is not a bad thing. We are not frightened of becoming more
efficient and we strive to be an organisation that is excellent
in every way, particularly in the management of our finances.
Q322 Chairman: So you think there
is still scope for more efficiency savings?
Dr Thurley: I think it would be
a dereliction of my duty as Chief Executive if I said that there
was not scope. Of course we could always become more efficient.
Sir Neil Cossons: We certainly
see the peer review as an opportunity rather than a threat and
I think the point that Simon made about it being something on
which the DCMS and ourselves are at one provides us with the opportunity
to demonstrate to the peer review team what we have done over
the last four years and, we believe, get some quite powerful endorsement
of the modernisation programme and its results.
Q323 Alan Keen: You spoke right at
the beginning about training for local authority people. Could
you expand on that a little bit more please?
Dr Thurley: Well, we launched
a scheme that we called "HELM" two years ago, which
is Historic Environment Local Management, another terrible acronym,
which has a website which is available for various types of officers
and actually members of local authorities who deal with the historic
environment. It has about 120,000 hits a year on it. That is in
a sense the core of what we are doing, but around that is a series
of training sessions where we are training about 1,000 people
a year and we are providing advice and guidance for local authorities
too. I would say that I do not think it is still enough. We have
reorientated our grant programmes so that we are putting twice
the amount of money into supporting people in local authorities
and others in dealing with the historic environment, so we are
now putting about £7 million worth of grant, and in some
local authorities we are actually part-funding conservation officers
and other historic environment professionals. There is a lot to
do and I think we are doing a lot, but I would certainly say that
we still have more to do.
Sir Neil Cossons: And in areas
where there is very specific need, we have made special provision,
so, another acronym, HELP, the Historic Environment Liverpool
Project, is in a city which has been in crisis over recent years,
is undergoing extraordinary renaissance now and much of that of
course based on the quality of its historic buildings, many of
which are severely neglected. We have put our own staff into Liverpool
City Council's planning office to help with the preparation of
the World Heritage bid which was successful, with the definition
of a sophisticated Buildings At Risk Register, which itself came
off the back of The Liverpool Echo's `Stop the Rot' campaign
in which they were castigating the City Council for neglect of
historic buildings. That will be a short-term involvement at a
very deep level by us for a period of, say, three years and those
people will then come out and our belief is that Liverpool will
be able to cope then from the quality of the knowledge which it
has in-house with its historic environment issues. We have a number
of examples of that and usually it is a slightly smaller scale
with local authorities where there are particular issues, short-
or medium-term, which have to be dealt with
Q324 Alan Keen: As you probably know,
we visited Liverpool.
Sir Neil Cossons: Indeed.
Q325 Alan Keen: It is thrilling frankly
and you deserve a tremendous amount of credit for your input into
that and so does the local authority as well. I thought it was
so impressive that that regeneration could come and link with
the old buildings and the traditions of the port.
Sir Neil Cossons: Well, England's
finest Victorian city deserved better and we recognised that.
Dr Thurley: Chairman, the inhabitants
of Manchester might disagree, but perhaps we will not go into
that!
Q326 Alan Keen: What about the local
authority budgets themselves? How are they coping? We all know
that local authorities' budgets have been cut back everywhere
really in order to force them to be more efficient. Overall, how
are they coping with the demands that you would like to see them
meet?
Sir Neil Cossons: We addressed
that in part in Simon's earlier answers about conservation officers.
We know that there are areas of stress in local authorities and
we see our work as being to encourage local authorities to move
the historic environment higher up their agendas.
Q327 Alan Keen: Do you think the
DCMS has got the power to help get funding particularly for this
aspect of local authority responsibility? It is a difficult area,
is it not?
Dr Thurley: Of course local authorities
have to make their own decisions about their own priorities and
I think it is difficult for either us or the DCMS to oblige local
authorities to do anything in this respect. I think that the Chairman
is absolutely right when he says that the level that we have got
to work at is the level which encourages members in particular,
but also officers, to value the historic environment, and we believe
that if they value it, they will want to make sure that their
historic environment services are properly funded, and that really
is the thinking behind the Heritage Champions project that we
have got. We have now got 181 champions which is almost 50% of
all local authorities and we see that as our way in to try and
persuade local authorities to give the historic environment a
higher profile.
Q328 Alan Keen: The point I have
raised in earlier sessions is that in my own London Borough of
Hounslow, we have got real icons like Osterley, Syon, Gunnersbury,
Hogarth House and nobody is going to let them fall down, and the
people in the boroughs are very good at looking after their own
areas and we have got funding in the past for, against other people
in the borough, but they are very good. I was going across the
road on the Great West Road Golden Mile when the Firestone façade
was knocked down, which was wonderful, though not as good as the
A40 Hoover factory, but pretty good and that was knocked down
one weekend. I was not in there at the weekend, I was across the
road, trying to stop them, but that is the sort of thing that
is not looked after, like the river frontage at Brentford and
the canal where the Grand Union joins it. I have asked this question
in earlier sessions: is there a role to make sure we get it all,
that we catch everything in an area? Is there a role for schools
because, if a local authority has not got the resources, should
this be part of the school curriculum so that the future people
who are going to look after it get involved at a very young age?
Is there a part there and are you involved in any way? Has anybody
really pushed this?
Sir Neil Cossons: If you accept
the argument that the historic environment is part of the DNA
of the nation, it means something to everybody, it is part of
all of us, and what underlies a lot of our philosophy in terms
of how we have been developing the appreciation and understanding
of the historic environment, particularly since the publication
of Power of Place, firstly, it is our recognition that
it is something which is important to most people in one sense
or another and that that importance happens at a series of levels,
and sometimes it is at the level of an individual community or
even a street corner. Those are the areas, I think, where we see
the opportunity to engage youngsters in educational programmes,
school activities and visits and all that sort of thing is particularly
effective. One of the other things that came out of the Power
of Place work was the comparison that was made by the relative
effectiveness of the natural environment lobby in terms of frogs
and natterjack toads and village ponds and species in hedgerows,
for which there is huge buy-in right through all levels and all
parts of society, and the relative paucity of the ability of the
historic environment people to achieve the same. I have no doubt
at all that the need is there and that the desire is there on
the part of people to engage. We would see our role as one of
scene-setting, helping, initiating and enabling rather than direct
engagement with the local communities, but that is at the heart
of a lot of our education and outreach work.
Q329 Helen Southworth: You referred
earlier to the "best of the rest". For Members of Parliament
and many other people based within a local community, it is very
helpful for us to know whereabouts we are in either the best or
the rest and I am wondering whether you have some sort of map
or guidance that shows where there are comparisons in terms of
heritage. The stuff you did at Liverpool was absolutely fantastic,
although quite frankly it was not before time and Liverpool was
having buildings drop by the day of absolutely fantastic quality,
but many of us in our own local communities have other buildings,
such as the north-west industrial heritage buildings that just
do not have anybody around who knows how important they are or
how to deal with them and they are seeing that somebody else is
going to do it. Do you have a map for us that says where the best
are and where the rest are up to?
Sir Neil Cossons: We certainly
carry around in our minds those that we recognise as good and
we point others to them when they ask, so it is not a published
league table.
Q330 Helen Southworth: Why not?
Sir Neil Cossons: It think it
would be invidious if we were to do that because our desire is
to raise the rest to the standards of the best and we do not think
that is going to be done by castigating anybody. We think it is
going to be more an opportunity to show by example.
Q331 Helen Southworth: So how are
you doing it then? Do they know which category they are in?
Sir Neil Cossons: Well, we go
to great efforts to congratulate the best and certainly through
our regional offices, and it is worth remembering that regionalisation
for English Heritage was one of the key steps in devolving responsibilities
from Saville Row to the places where those responsibilities are
both met and properly answered, so our regional offices and our
regional staff are very close to local authorities of all types
in their particular regions, so out of the Manchester office you
will find people who will know every single local authority in
the region, will be aware of all of the key pressure points and
will know by name the key elected members, the conservation officers
and the directors of planning in those areas. Now, that is, I
think, the right role for us and we will offer help and encouragement
wherever we can.
Q332 Helen Southworth: So who should
take the other role then, the one that identifies where socks
need pulling up or whatever?
Dr Thurley: Well, we do actually
do that, but I think, as Neil says, as a national body going in
and castigating people is not the way which we feel is the most
effective way of trying to make things better, but there are local
authorities that we feel have got significant problems and, when
we find authorities like that, we do need to be involved. For
instance, sometimes one of the ways that we do it is that when
our Commission meets, they decide to go and meet in the particular
town and have dinner with the leader and the key members of the
local authority and actually address it head-on like that. There
have been a number of occasions, Nottingham being one of them,
where we have had a fairly difficult relationship on occasions
and I think that that is the way we prefer to work.
Q333 Mr Hall: In an earlier answer
you have both referred to the Power of Place document which
identified a serious lack of data about the built environment
and in answer to Philip Davies you actually said that there is
now significant quantitative and qualitative evidence which would
build the case for the 2007 funding bid. Could you give the Committee
an indication of what the actual cost would be for outstanding
necessary repairs to the physical environment that you are responsible
for?
Sir Neil Cossons: For the whole
of it, no, but elements of it, yes. For buildings at risk, I think
we have got a price tag of £400 million. We publish an annual
Buildings at Risk Register which has about 1,400 key buildings
that are under serious threat and we take some off that list each
year usually because they are protected rather than because they
fall down. Of course a few go on to it each year, so we keep a
running tally of what the cost might be of bringing those back
into decent order and it, broadly speaking, is in the order of
£400 million.
Q334 Mr Hall: Is that just for Grade
II Listed buildings or is that everything?
Dr Thurley: Grade I and II*.
Q335 Mr Hall: Have you done an assessment
of those buildings which are outside that classification?
Dr Thurley: One of our aims in
our strategic plan is to achieve more or less, I think, what you
are asking about which is some sort of quantification of what
it would cost to put what are nationally regarded as the significant
buildings and sites into a secure condition. We at the moment
only monitor the ones that we have direct statutory responsibility
for, which are the I's and the II*s, but we are working with lots
of local authorities to try and encourage them to maintain registers
and we have run a number of pilots for scheduled ancient monuments
as well, so our aim is certainly to try and quantify that. With
specific building types we are also doing it and on 10 May we
are going to launch a campaign for places of worship. We have
actually now done a quantification of what the annual repair bill
for places of worship is, Listed places of worship.
Q336 Mr Hall: With this list, are
you treading water, are you making progress, or is the list getting
bigger?
Sir Neil Cossons: I think we are
making progress in some areas. We have been with the great English
cathedrals for 12 or 13 years and, arguably, they are in the best
state they have been in since the 13th Century. Now, that does
not mean to say that the job is done, it never will be, but it
means that we were able to strategically tackle an issue of cathedrals
and their maintenance and repair, but while we were concentrating
on that, the emerging crisis of English parish churches where
congregations were diminishing and the cost of maintaining the
roof was not has highlighted other areas of need and that is what
we will try to tackle in the Inspired campaign.
Q337 Mr Hall: If I can put the question
in a slightly different way, are the number of buildings that
require repair work, essential and necessary repair work, is that
list growing or is that list diminishing?
Dr Thurley: For the register that
we maintain, we use 1999 as the base year and we have taken off
that register 36% of the buildings. Now, when I say "we"
have taken them off, I might just rephrase that and say that 36%
of the buildings have come off.
Q338 Mr Hall: Is that because they
have fallen down?
Dr Thurley: No, because they have
been restored. We have made a significant contribution to that.
Over the last five years we have put £31 million worth of
grants into buildings at risk on that register, but what happens
is that every year when we take 300 or 400 off, another 300 or
400 come on. Now, a slightly smaller number come on than we take
off, so the number is diminishing, but the real problem is that
there are a hard core of very, very difficult buildings when 3%
of the buildings on that list actually account for the vast majority
of the £400 million and these are buildings with what we
describe as `significant conservation deficit'. In other words,
the amount of money you need to spend on them is far, far greater
than the value of the building after it would have been conserved,
so there are some very, very difficult buildings on that list
which it is going to take a lot of, I am afraid it can only be,
public money to sort out.
Sir Neil Cossons: That in a sense
sets the agenda for English Heritage because, if you look at the
wider issue of buildings and their recycling within the historic
environment, most of the money of course comes from areas which
are not English Heritage. If you think of the huge efforts to
regenerate the Lancashire textile mills, many of those have gone
back into being used often as residential accommodation and developers
like Urban Splash and others have made a spectacular contribution
there to the protection of the historic environment in its wider
context, so too has money from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Therefore,
what we try to do is assess where our money is most required strategically
and it is some of these critical buildings which are highly important
in historical or architectural terms, but where the payback in
a straightforward commercial sense is non-existent where we have
to concentrate our efforts.
Q339 Mr Hall: I interrupted you when
you were referring to the Inspire agenda that you have
got in terms of historical churches and cathedrals. We have had
evidence on this, as you well know, and one of the concerns is
that parishioners are getting older and congregations are getting
smaller and the burden to preserve and conserve these buildings
is falling on a smaller section of the community. What can you
do to help?
Dr Thurley: Well, not to spoil
our announcement on 10 May, but we actually agree with you that
there is a problem. We have been working with the HLF in our joint
grant scheme putting substantial amounts of money, more than £25
million a year, into what I would describe as `remedial work'
for parish churches. Now, what our campaign will be highlighting,
I think it is, next week or the week after is that actually we
believe that more needs to be done in terms of maintenance. We
have managed to quantify the annual cost of maintaining parish
churches and other places of worship and we think it is about
£185 million a year. We think that once you have put in all
the contributions from the congregations, from the denominations
and ourselves, there is a £118-million-a-year shortfall and
we do not think that that £118-million-a-year shortfall can
be reduced by simply patching up the problems once they have happened.
We think the way to deal with it is to make sure that the place
is properly maintained in the first place, so we will be making
some proposals for various schemes which will hopefully reduce
that annual maintenance deficit by making sure buildings do not
fall into disrepair in the first place.
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