Memorandum submitted by Nicholas Boldrini
It is my belief that there the main priority
for the Heritage White paper is to make the provision of Historic
Environment Records a statutory function of Local Authorities.
This requirement should include the provision of dedicated Heritage-profession
staff to the maintenance and improvement of this record. There
should be also a strong commitment by the DCMS to ensure that
these records are maintained to appropriate standards and resourced
so as to be up to date and comprehensive. HER's are the basis
for much Heritage work—the management of archaeological
remains through Environmental Stewardship, the provision of planning
advice based on their contents, the engagement of the public through
provision of information. These other activities can only be adequately
carried out if the core systems are in place to support these
other functions.
Other priorities involve balancing the role
of planning and Heritage protection. There is a perception that
Heritage issues often hold up development. Yet this is often because,
15 years on from PPG 16, developers do not as a matter of course
approach Historic Environment Professionals prior to submitting
planning applications. Many schemes are only learnt about during
the planning application stages of a development, and thus time
is taken up resolving issues at this stage, which can delay decisions.
However, no developer waits until this stage to employ an architect,
and the same early inclusion of Heritage issues should be mandatory.
To this end, it should be made obligatory that a statement of
Heritage issues be included with every planning application (though
there may be certain classes of application where this obligation
could be removed), and this could only be shown to be done by
a signed letter from the relevant Heritage advisors. This would
free up resources from checking which applications might have
Historic Environment Impacts, to dealing with those that do. By
putting the onus on developers to check this information is present
would also mean they would be aware from an early stage of their
project of the need to allow sufficient resources and time to
resolve any issues.
English Heritage's role seems to be increasingly
unclear, as it seems to be that more and more of their functions
are being devolved, or proposed to be devolved to Local Authorities
as part of for example, the Heritage Protection review. However,
it is unclear how this devolvement will work and if sufficient
resources will be made available to manage effectively this change.
However, English Heritage is a vital institution for maintaining
the overview of the state of the Nations Heritage and determining
National priorities which might be less obvious at a lower level
of engagement.
The funding of the Olympics and the siphoning
off of money from other good causes to fund them is short sighted
and perverse. Sport is a big business, through sponsorship, and
it does seem appropriate that the organisations (eg the Football
Associations and other sports bodies) which will benefit most
from the Olympics and the interest of youngsters in sport should
fund more of the infrastructure needed, rather than taking funds
from other sectors which stand to gain little from this event.
Furthermore, the use of HLF money to fund developments mainly
in the South East seems to yet again show the bias of distribution
of funds. This is particularly true in the case of the HLF which
is beginning to mature and deliver more Heritage benefits to the
community, through the creation of numerous Community Archaeology
Projects and access to heritage information via the internet.
These projects which facilitate access to people around the country
to their heritage, will end to fund sports facilities for a geographically
compact group of people.
The fundamental issue, as in many things, for
the Heritage is adequate and stable resourcing. And this applies
not to the provision of funds just for big flash projects, but
to ensure enough resources are in place to maintain the core systems,
services, structures and activities which maintain and protect
the majority of our historic environment. It is usually upon these
core items that big projects draw for their success, and on which
they depend and take for granted. But these core activities are
also usually the first places where cuts are felt (the recent
example of threats to the whole Historic Environment infrastructure
in Northamptonshire due to the need to cut budgets is a case in
point). Until these core activities are adequately resourced and
safeguarded, the value added projects that rely on them will increasingly
be a hollow shell of an apparently glossy Historic Environment,
with no substance to back it up or for future generations to explore.
20 December 2005
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