Memorandum submitted by the Merseyside
Civic Society
INTRODUCTION
Merseyside Civic Society is grateful for the
opportunity to give evidence to the Select Committee, prompted,
in part, by the interest shown in the matters raised directly
with members of the Committee in the course of their visit to
Liverpool on 20 March 2006.
Merseyside Civic Society (MCS) is a charitable
body with aims that include the protection and preservation of
the architectural and built-form heritage and public amenity features
of the Merseyside area, the promotion of high standards of town
planning, architecture and design within the area and the safeguarding
of areas and structures of historic and/or public interest.
For many years MCS has offered constructive
comment and opinion on schemes and policies that have been directly
related to, or appear to threaten, the city's enviably large and
varied stock of heritage architectural structures and related
spaces.
We recognise that the Committee's primary concern
is with identifying issues that should be given a degree of priority
in the forthcoming Heritage White Paper, together with particular
matters to which the terms of reference of the inquiry refer.
To this end, this memorandum draws on, or refers to, material
assembled for the above "lobbying" purposes in an attempt
to highlight those heritage-related issues that are of more direct
general concern to the Committee. Where relevant, active web links
are provided in the text to enable access to be gained to the
original, more substantial source material, most of which is linked
directly to the MCS website [http://merseysidecivicsociety.org.uk].
The issues on which we have chosen to focus
are grouped under the following headings:
Concerns about the architectural heritage and
resident insensitive, cavalier manner in which the local New Heartlands
Pathfinder has chosen to pursue many of the otherwise entirely
laudable aims of the Housing Market Renewal Initiative.
Concerns about the depressingly lengthy list
of failures of local authorities on Merseyside to address satisfactorily
a wide range of heritage stewardship matters, despite public commitments
to protect and enhance the area's heritage assets.
(c) Appreciated and Celebrated Heritage
The welcome initiatives to promote appreciation
of heritage matters, best exemplified by the efforts of the Civic
Trust (now supported by the Liverpool Culture Company) to widen
the impact of the Heritage Open Day programme.
These we couple here with the commendable initiative
of the Liverpool Heritage Forum (led by Andrew Pearce) in seeking
to galvanise the efforts of many disparate interest groups engaged
in heritage-related activities, ahead of the celebration of Liverpool's
800 birthday in 2007 and the city's status as the European Capital
of Culture in 2008.
(A) UNDERVALUED
HERITAGE
1. MCS has made representations to voice
concerns about the direction taken by government policy and, more
especially, the way in which policy is implemented in the name
of Housing Market Renewal as a vehicle for addressing significant
problems facing the future of the housing stock (see, for example,
submissions to:
the ODPM Housing, Planning, Local Government
and Regions Committee on Empty Homes and Low-demand Pathfinders,
January 2005
[http://www.liv.ac.uk/mcs/lfs/consultations/odpmhmrplet0105.pdf];
the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee,
October 2005
[http://www.liv.ac.uk/mcs/lfs/consultations/paclet1005.pdf]
and the ODPM Select Committee on Affordable
Housing, November 2005
[http://www.liv.ac.uk/mcs/lfs/consultations/odpmaffhlet0511.pdf]
The main lines of argument are featured
in an article by Peter Brown that was published in the April 2005
issue of the Civic Trust magazine Focus
[http://www.civictrust.org.uk/news/enews/members/may05/Page%204-5.pdf].
2. The principal target of our criticism
has been the approach adopted by the Pathfinders, as is well exemplified
by New Heartlands, in demonstrating a clear presumption in favour
of large-scale clearance and new build, rather than viewing demolition
as a measure of last resort, only turned to when all other avenues
of regenerative refurbishment have been fully explored. This is
especially critical in areas of otherwise attractive terraced
properties, located in tree-lined streets of considerable character,
such as in most parts of Liverpool's Welsh Streets area.
3. Such areas display heritage qualities
of streetscape and the specific conditions to support a sought-after
"street-based" lifestyle that are massively undervalued
by those bent on sweeping away areas that have functioned so well
for generations.
Other threatened areas, such as that affected
by the Edge Lane West scheme, display a coherent and attractive
Victorian townscape, and a setting for several listed buildings,
that is to be replaced by bland and nondescript architecture of
little local resonance, prompting the local MP and Government
Minister, Jane Kennedy, to describe the plans as "social
cleansing" and "municipal vandalism".
4. In many such areas, so-called "market
failure" can be seen to be attributable, in no small measure,
to the high proportion of long-neglected properties, in the ownership
of the local authority and/or registered social landlords, that
have been intentionally withheld from the market in anticipation
of future receipt of substantial grant aid from the clearance/new
build programme—despite clear evidence of a significant
revival in the local property market.
5. A not untypical example is that of an
owner-occupier on Venmore Street in Anfield who recently agreed
to a compulsory purchase sale of his substantially improved 4
bed terraced town-house to the Pathfinder/Council for £87,500,
just over two years after buying it, in a derelict condition,
for £25,000. No doubt the house would have been worth
rather more if the City Council were not committed to demolishing
it, and much of the district around it.
6. Particularly frustrating, in these depressing
circumstances, is the unenviable position of the owner occupiers
located in the areas threatened with clearance. Evident shortcomings
in the processes of consultation and community engagement have
failed to capitalise on the commitment to the area and abundant
goodwill of those owning a stake in an area's future that should
be more effectively tapped in achieving the truly sustainable
conditions in which a local community can prosper.
(B) NEGLECTED
HERITAGE
7. MCS has long sought to promote the adoption
of a more pro-active approach to the stewardship of the area's
inherited stock of buildings of high architectural quality and,
especially, its unrivalled scale of provision of fine Victorian
public parks. We have been disappointed by the poorly developed
appreciation of the need for a serious commitment to a heritage
strategy for the city of Liverpool. We believe that such a strategy
should embrace the protection and enhancement of the qualities
of place and space that have made Liverpool so distinctive and
historically unique—throughout the city, not just in those
areas that enjoy existing statutory protections.
8. This effort is, in part, reflected in
the brief and activities of the Society's Parks and Suburban Heritage
Committee, a significant product of which was, in February 2005,
an 11-page submission, to Chris Blandford Associates, of comments
and suggestions in response to a consultation exercise on a proposed
"heritage strategy" for the city [see http://www.liv.ac.uk/mcs/lfs/consultations/blandfordlet0205.pdf].
This submission advocated the production of a Historic Environment
Masterplan, as a unified spatial heritage development strategy,
to be embedded within the Local Development Framework. We believe
that this pro-active approach could be usefully pursued more widely,
in other towns and cities, where heritage assets are neglected
or under-used.
9. The submission identified a number of
neglected elements of Liverpool's urban form that, with imagination,
could be pressed into making a contribution to the area's regeneration.
These included the Great Streets that define the structure of
the city, the Great Parks (Botanic Gardens, Princes, Newsham,
Stanley and Sefton Parks), many landmark buildings, suburban villas
and park estates, plus village centres and their associated churches
and other key buildings, the cores of settlements that have been
absorbed into greater Liverpool over a long period. What is required,
in many of these cases, is not only continuing care and management,
but also clear statements of principles (written/visual/statistical)
relating to "making places", ie establishing a future
for the past, while allowing for change, adaptation and development,
for relatively small-scale environments.
10. It is regrettable that the impression
has been gained that the above exercise in consultation merely
served as a means of prioritising bids for Heritage Lottery Fund
allocations, rather than providing a basis for establishing a
coherent strategy directed at maximising the benefit to be derived
from the nurturing, and positive stewardship, of the area's inheritance
of architectural and public space assets.
11. We also note with frustration the inadequacy
of the current Spot Listing machinery, now administered by English
Heritage, as a measure of last resort in efforts to retain threatened
buildings, the contribution of which to the maintenance of an
attractive local street-scene or townscape seems to be undervalued
in making judgments. We cite, as an example, our efforts to prevent
the demolition of the old Post Office building in Kensington where
the grounds for rejection of listing were largely based on "loss
of internal structural detail", without adequate attention
being given to the enormous value of the presence of the building
and its attractive external detailing. It seemed that, in this
case, a featureless, "bitmac-filled gap" between buildings
was the preferred fate of this superb example of Victorian architectural
endeavour.
12. We are further depressed by the statement
by English Heritage's chief executive Simon Thurley to the effect
that EH "has now got no problem with housing market renewal"
as "almost no buildings of national importance are under
threat" (!!).
(C) APPRECIATED
AND CELEBRATED
HERITAGE
13. We are pleased to note the existence
of commendable initiatives to promote appreciation of heritage
matters that have been promoted by the Civic Trust, including
the Green Flag Award scheme and the Heritage Open Day programme.
We also welcome the way in which the potential of the latter programme
has been recognised by those involved in the preparations for
celebration of both Liverpool's 800 birthday in 2007 and the city's
status as European Capital of Culture in 2008.
14. Beyond that year, incidentally, we note
the celebration of the centenaries of the establishment of the
University of Liverpool's Department of Civic Design, as the first
university department devoted to the study of town and regional
planning—the world's first planning school, in 2009, and
the following year, the publication of the world's first quality
journal to focus on the subject of town planning, The Town
Planning Review, which continues to be edited in the Department
of Civic Design.
15. The Liverpool Culture Company's Heritage
and Environment Manager, Eileen Willshaw, has worked closely with
Civic Trust staff to initiate plans to widen the impact of the
Heritage Open Day programme during the 2007-08 celebrations, including,
eventually, the devotion of a whole month, rather than a week,
to Open Day activities and a scheme to encourage earlier interest
in heritage issues among school children, through the direct involvement
of teachers, during the summer term.
16. We also recognise the enormous value
of the of the Liverpool Heritage Forum (led by Andrew Pearce)
[see: http://www.liverpool-heritage.org.uk/] in seeking to galvanise
the efforts of many disparate interest groups engaged in a broad
range of cultural and heritage-related activities, ahead of the
above celebrations. It must be said that this welcome initiative
was prompted, in part, by the failure of the principal organisers
of the celebrations to engage with the diverse range of groups
that were eager to make a contribution but who were not offered
any obvious means of communicating or delivering that desire.
The Forum is providing what seems to have provied to be an effective
means of channelling and tapping that under-valued reserve of
knowledge, expertise and commitment that is essential to the effective
passing on, to future generations, of awareness and appreciation
of heritage issues.
17. Finally, we are pleased that the unique
character of Liverpool's architectural heritage has been recognised
through the inscription of the World Heritage Site. However, we
are also concerned that there is a danger that the protection
that this status affords the site and its buffer zone is interpreted
as a block on all future development within its boundaries. There
is a critical need to ensure that whatever development is permitted
is of sufficient architectural quality and that design details
and materials are of an adequately demanding specification to
warrant a place in this valued location. We believe that the area
must be allowed to evolve and incorporate good examples of architecture,
urban design and cityscape that have a place in a dynamic 21st
Century city. It should not be allowed to become fossilised, as
a snapshot of the relics of bygone ages in which the city benefited
from the construction of often unplanned assemblages of individually
iconic buildings—the fruits of world trading success, entrepreneurial
enterprise and magnificent demonstrations of corporate and municipal
pride.
31 March 2006
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