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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 912-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE Culture, Media and Sport Committee
protecting and preserving our heritage
Monday 20 March 2006
liverpool city council offices
MS FRAN TOMS, MR PETER BABB and MR MIKE BURCHNALL MR PAUL SPOONER, MR JIM GILL and MS HEATHER EMERY Evidence heard in Public Questions 136 - 170
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Monday 20 March 2006 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the Chair Janet Anderson Philip Davies Mr Mike Hall Alan Keen Mr Adrian Sanders Helen Southworth ________________ Memorandum submitted by Liverpool City Council and Manchester City Council
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Fran Toms, Head of Cultural Strategy, and Mr Peter Babb, Head of Planning, Manchester City Council, and Mr Mike Burchnall, Regeneration Services, Liverpool City Council, gave evidence. Q136 Chairman: Good afternoon, everybody. This is the third session that the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee have held into the heritage. We were keen that we should get out of London and come to an area rich in heritage, and in choosing where to come we had to choose between strong competition from both Manchester and Liverpool. We have come to Liverpool in recognition that obviously the city is the European Capital of Culture in 2008 and is host of a world heritage site, but equally Manchester made an extremely strong case. I would like to thank Manchester City Council for coming over to Liverpool in order to give evidence to us this afternoon. Can I welcome Peter Babb and Fran Toms from Manchester City Council and Mike Burchnall from Liverpool City Council. Also please acknowledge the thanks of the Committee to Liverpool City Council for the extremely useful tour we have already had during our time in the city today. Clearly both City Councils acknowledge how important heritage assets can be in regeneration, but can I ask you whether you feel that that is universally accepted? I note that in the evidence that Liverpool City Council has submitted to us, you say there is still a great deal of antipathy to heritage-led regeneration amongst developers. How much of an obstacle is that, and how much do you feel you still have to work to persuade people of the importance of heritage in regeneration? Mr Burchnall: Chairman, Committee, yes, I think we said antipathy. I do not think we said a great amount of antipathy, but I think it is still the case that you have to fight to achieve heritage regeneration in certain areas. I think it is a changing environment and it has changed significantly over the last five years. I think it changes with outside influences. In Liverpool it has changed with an economic revival, where the economics of converting historic buildings and reusing historic buildings have become easier from a period of 15 or 20 years when it was extremely difficult. I think the environment has changed. The attitude of key agencies has changed; our own local agencies and regional and sub-regional agencies. As the environment has changed, developers themselves have changed. I think it is still difficult in certain areas to persuade developers of the benefits of heritage regeneration, and particularly those areas which perhaps are not where you can secure grant regimes or where regeneration is behind other areas. Those are the difficulties. Mr Babb: I would echo a lot of what Mike said. Looking at Manchester over the last 20 or 25 years it was not always very easy to get interest in investment in the city, and bearing in mind the historic nature of many parts of the city centre in particular it has taken some time to build up a momentum so not only can we regenerate areas using historic assets but also we can get investment in quality new build within the city. Basically, our approach over a number of years has been looking at particular areas such as Castlefield and Ancoats - at Ancoats more recently - where you do need to have some sense of optimism and commitment to those areas to bring them forward for redevelopment, you have to find where the magic way is signalling to the private sector what the opportunity is for them and sometimes that will be because grant funding is made available and they see the commitment of parties, maybe, to use compulsory purchase orders. I think all of that starts to build up into a critical mass, basically saying, "Yes, we can improve our historic environment; we can preserve buildings. There has got to be something in it for all parties though", and I think that is something we have managed to achieve in Manchester over a period of time. Part of it was going out and saying, "There are good opportunities within Manchester". Some listed buildings will be sometimes incredibly difficult to bring forward for development though, and obviously sometimes there will be tensions within the system about the amount of intervention within historic buildings to bring them forward for productive alternative uses because it is those alternative uses, the new uses, that preserve the historic environment. We have seen reasonably controversial schemes in the not too distant past, but only a couple of them, a lot of the transformation of our historic environment within the city has been run in partnership with the private sector. Think of all the cotton warehouses within the city; great if you were an owner at one time, but maybe not. Grant funding was used to bring forward additional proposals but after a period of time the private sector took on those properties on their own because they could see the commitment of the City Council to improve the wider environment as well. I think it is really a question of "What is the right time? What is the right time to signal the opportunities for redevelopment? Have you got the infrastructure in place to make it a worthwhile investment?" because if you do not have that, it is going to be increasingly difficult to attract the private sector in to invest their money into the historic environment. I do believe, given the will, that any city and any town can make that happen. It is how they organise themselves which is particularly important. Q137 Chairman: We have seen today already some magnificent examples of historic buildings and listed buildings that have been brought back to life through regeneration whilst preserving their character. To what extent do you feel that you can achieve that or are you resigned to losing some buildings and, if so, to what extent are you losing some buildings? Ms Toms: Could I just add to what Peter was saying to complete that picture because I would hate to think today's hearing is just about the built environment. One of the points that we wanted to make, which we made in our submission, is that this is a partnership across the city, it is not just about finding future uses for historic buildings, it is also about what matters to ordinary people. Often people value their heritage as much as their oral history and what we call the "softer heritage" as much as the buildings heritage issues. I think it is important that from the point of view of Manchester - and Peter picked up on the importance of partnership with the private sector - it is a partnership across the city. If the city through local area agreements in the future, for example, determines what the strategic priorities are for the city through consultation with its people, it becomes much easier to deliver some of these, what look like insurmountable problems in terms of specific buildings. Mr Burchnall: I think we should have got very close to the position in Liverpool where we should not lose any more listed buildings. Clearly there are still buildings, you have seen buildings particularly in the Ropewalks, which are still in poor condition, but again I think you have seen the economic climate in that area, the major redevelopments on the waterfront, the Paradise Street development by Grosvenor, which is working its way into that area. Most of the buildings in that area should have a good and active life. I think during the 1990s, we did lose about 25 listed buildings within the city. Again, I do not think we should lose many more. As Peter has said, the difficult ones are perhaps not the ones in areas like Ropewalks or in areas where there is concentrated regeneration, it tends to be buildings in outlying areas where there is perhaps not a community that is entirely supportive of a building or where grant regimes are not available, those are the ones which are still difficult to deal with that take a lot of time and effort. Q138 Chairman: What is the position in Manchester? Mr Babb: I am doing a bit of a totaliser here, and I think it is something like three or four listed buildings that might have been demolished over recent years and in every case the case would have been made for the demolition of those buildings. I think there will always be some difficulties bringing some listed buildings back into use, because we have to remember that in the case of listed buildings, they might have been designed by eminent architects, but they were not always put together by eminent builders. You will find that there are certain difficulties with some buildings. I think also, particularly with thematic listings, there are probably difficulties bringing some buildings back into a use that will serve the building well in terms of prolonging its future. I think we have to be a little bit careful about what we do list in the future, that we are not making a little bit of a rod for our own backs. Mr Burchnall: Could I grab one point there, I think that is a very vital point that Peter makes, that it is important to work with English Heritage and DCMS in terms of new listings. Through the project that we have been running with English Heritage for the last five years, we have been working very closely to look and see which buildings should be listed, where the thematic listed buildings are and that those buildings have a real chance of survival. It is a better, more comprehensive approach to listing and avoids some of the problems we have had in the past with spot listing which obviously occurs later in the process. Q139 Helen Southworth: In terms of finding a new and appropriate use and dealing with buildings at risk, how important do you think having specialist expertise available is, either to you as local authorities or to developers, and how important is seeing a role model or somebody else who has succeeded at it? Mr Babb: I think that is a very complex question and it might not be such a complex answer. Really I think what it comes down to with some buildings is you need a developer or a landowner who is creative and is willing to think on a wide-ranging basis about what uses might form the base of bringing a building back into use for the future. I think there is a lot of specialist expertise in terms of the architecture profession and others to see some of the changes that would be needed to be made to a listed building in terms of interventions to make things happen. I think it is having a bit of a creative idea sometimes to deal with some of the buildings that inevitably are going to be very difficult to think of new uses for. We have one or two within Manchester; some of those have been resolved, such as the Free Trade Hall, the Great Northern Warehouse and we are currently looking at one or two more, including Victoria Baths. Ms Toms: Can I just add to that, I think the specialist knowledge we are looking for these days is changing. The architecture and conservation expertise is easy to get hold of. I think what is difficult is the challenges, and the balance between that and the sort of expertise you need to find a viable ongoing use with the revenue implications of that. More and more we are looking at a very wide partnership between the sort of expertise that will look at business planning aspects and market assessment work in the context of conservation plans. It is the balancing of those skills. One of the things we found that works very well - and we have done it with the Victoria Baths project - is to set up a partnership, a stakeholders group, with the likes of English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund and ourselves where we are pragmatically looking at future uses in terms of what is right for the historic aspects of the building but what can be maintained in the long term because that is what the public are interested in; they are not looking for just a restoration project, they are looking for a building that can be used and owned by the public again. That is what we are more and more interested in in terms of finding future uses in the context of regeneration of a particular area. Mr Burchnall: I tend to think that probably there are enough skills and expertise particularly on the structural side. I can think of a particular building at the moment where we have a City Council structural survey, an English Heritage structural survey and the applicants have got their own structural survey and they are all arguing. All the expertise is there, but I think again it is about pulling together all of the resources and expertise to bring new uses to those old buildings. I think you have been to Stanley Dock Warehouse, that huge complex, which is outlying in terms of the city centre. In terms of structure, we know a lot about that structure and we probably know what it can be converted to, there have been all sorts of option appraisals in relation to it. At the end of the day, it is putting together an economic package that makes that building work and also the surrounding area and that is where the expertise needs to lie. It is pulling together key public sector partners and private sector partners to achieve that. Q140 Chairman: Following on from Helen's question, obviously the Government intends that extra responsibilities will fall to local authorities under the proposals in the Heritage Protection Review. Are you confident that you have the expertise to meet those new responsibilities or are you going to have to start to recruit more staff or buy in expertise from outside? Mr Burchnall: I think over the last few years in Liverpool we have extended the conservation section within the authority. I think the difficulty is perhaps two-fold: it is at times having the expertise and at times it is the funding mechanisms because we have been able to extend resources and buy in expertise because of short-term funding, whether that comes from HLF as part of a scheme, English Heritage or through planning delivery grants. We have had a high level of planning delivery grants; which has been very helpful and that finishes in 2008. Those will really be the issues because clearly, as any local authority, we are looking at reducing budgets rather than increasing them; there are priorities across the Council. It is the funding which is going to be the issue rather than the expertise over time. Mr Babb: I think extra statutory responsibilities do mean the need for extra resources to do a lot of the work that is happening within the review of the regime at the moment. I think we can always have a level of expertise; that expertise has to be paid for and therefore you do need some extra resources. I think some of the issues for me are about the conservation site and the conservation officers. To make things happen at times, it is not so much just conservation officer skill, it is design skills as well. To me they are an essential part of any approach to conservation. That probably does need to be taken into account, because what we want at the end of the day are proposals that can bring forward uses for buildings because that is the best way of preserving them, not too much more bureaucracy and paperwork. Q141 Mr Hall: In terms of management and protection of historic areas, aspects of the Government together with English Heritage look to performance indicators and at some stage it would appear that the Treasury decided that they were not such a good idea because they might have brought with them financial requirements on behalf of the Government. In the absence of these performance indicators, what else can local authorities do to be encouraged to protect their historic assets more effectively? Ms Toms: I do not think we should give up on performance indicators, so long as they are the right indicators - my planning colleagues might not agree with me - because, as Head of Cultural Strategy, I see heritage as a very key tool in delivering our strategy. We were involved in the pilot with DCMS on a wide range of qualitative indicators, not quantative only, so it is not just a question of how many conservation areas have you got, but much softer measurements. They should involve the public and what the public want. If we do that consultation, I think it can only add value. It is a question of which performance indicators we go with, but we are certainly quite positive about that so long as those performance indicators are tied in with the overall performance assessment of culture within the new CPA regime. My colleagues can answer the specific point if we do not have performance indicators. Mr Babb: As planners, we do have a number of performance indicators to achieve and draw attention to in the delivery system between targets and things like consultation. In terms of conservation areas themselves, we have already three conservation areas; has an appraisal been undertaken and also have we adopted management plans? To me, I think the important thing is getting a conservation area approved because that sends a very good signal out to local people, local communities and developers who sometimes want to do things in conservation areas which indeed the local authority or the residents would like to see. Having a number of conservation areas is clearly good. I do not know whether you need to have performance indicators to say have you adopted a management plan. What is the purpose of a management plan? Getting conservation area appraisal is something, but how much more do you need to manage an area when, for example, we do not go for Article 4 directions to take away the permitted development rights? We do not have the resources to do it. What would be the point in doing a piece of paperwork which is not going to get you anywhere? When it comes to performance indicators, I think I would want to be assured that whatever we are capturing is being used for something productive and on some of the softer things how meaningful are they? As long as we know they are meaningful, we are quite happy about performance indicators. Mr Burchnall: Again, I do not disagree with the principle of performance indicators, but I think we have got to be very careful about the type of indicators we use. I do have doubts about the BB219, which is the conservation area performance indicator at the moment, because, again, I do not think it is really useful to monitor whether or not our 34 conservation areas have character appraisals and management plans associated with them; I think one or two may do and we should be prioritising those. It is a very costly process and we are doing two of those this year, probably at an average cost of £50,000 per conservation area. By the time we have got to the end, it will be a very large bill and I wonder about the added value associated with that. I looked at the three heritage asset performance indicators which were proposed a year and a half ago. Again, I do not think they really told very much about how we are using our assets and developing our assets. I think I want to move into a process which identifies what those assets were, set action plans to deal with those assets and then look to see whether or not we have performed and were producing a heritage investment strategy and we were doing exactly that. I think that is a much better of way of monitoring how we use our heritage assets. Mr Babb: One other point to make is conservation area means special status and a conservation area really does have to have special status to have that title. The difficulty I think we are getting into in Manchester is that there are an awful lot of areas coming forward raised by community groups and civic societies et cetera saying, "We would like this area as a designated conservation area". It is as much for conservation, but also it is about the fear that there can be demolitions happening within their area that can change the character, because basically within the planning system you do not need planning permission for demolition. We are getting to an area where there is a marginal area coming in now, where "Does this area really deserve that special status?" but if it was to stop, we will authorise demolition, and that might be a good thing. We have to be careful about whether we have more conservation areas or trying to sort out more parts of the planning process so you can deal with the issue rather than deal with it the wrong way. Q142 Mr Hall: I understand that both Liverpool City Council and Manchester City Council have got a policy that deals with buildings at risk. Could you explain to the Committee the benefits of that particular policy? Could I ask as an adjunct to that question, is there anything that you would like to see in the White Paper that would help to support local authorities in dealing with buildings that are at risk or their built heritage? Mr Burchnall: Our Buildings at Risk programme started about five years ago in conjunction with English Heritage. It was part of what we call the HELP project in Liverpool and it was one particular aspect of heritage where we recognised real issues, that we were not properly targeting those buildings that were at risk. There have been various reviews of buildings at risk: one in 1999 and one in 2001, and then we review them constantly. In a sense, it has not just been the City Council; obviously it has been a partnership with the City Council, the local community and particularly the local press - and the local press have driven the City Council and its partners very helpfully, most of the time - and not uncritical of the City Council at times and we accept that, but it has been a forum which has brought together key individuals and key building owners. Obviously, it helped deal with individual buildings, what it has also done is two things: it has shown us what is good practice and how you can use principles from one side on another side. It has made clear in my mind what the problem areas are and those are still really about the complexity of the process, the complexity of acquisition and compulsory acquisition of assets which can deteriorate very quickly, and if they can come into public ownership can be dealt with quite quickly. It is still very difficult to go through that process to find development partners and funding for acquisition. I think those are the areas we would like to see government legislation move on. If listed buildings are important to the nation, then it is important locally and important to take action. If we can prove that action has not been taken, then I think we should be in a position where we can take action much more quickly. Mr Babb: We are following in the wake of Liverpool with our Buildings at Risk Strategy. We have one in preparation and we have a Buildings at Risk Officer jointly funded by ourselves and English Heritage. I will not go into the details of how many buildings are accounted for, but to me the crucial issue is this: it is all very well having a strategy, but have you got the means to implement it? One of the difficulties we face - and it is in our written evidence to you - is the issue of Urgent Work Notices, we can serve them but to recover the debt we have to go to court which is not like a land charge, like a Section 215 Notice, I will not go into the technicalities but it is much more difficult and uncertain process. I think the issue becomes one of why should council taxpayers' money be spent on a listed building and we might not be able to recover the debt? I think if you were looking at various technical issues within the White Paper, we would like you to look at the issues facing us with regards to the service of notices, and also I think the great commitment going through the other routes to seek out buildings; these are very resource-intensive. If we are not careful we will not have the right powers within our armoury to carry out and implement a strategy. The other issue is the VAT issue. I am afraid to say I have lost the plot a little bit on VAT and listed buildings. I think there should be a level playing field in terms of new build housing and conversions; enough said probably. My understanding at the moment is if there is an alteration to a listed building, you can get zero VAT, but if it is a like for like replacement or a repair that does not need a listed building consent, then you have to pay VAT. So it does seem to me there is a slight anomaly there. You can replace, say, a cast iron gutter with an aluminium one, you get that exemption; but if you replace it like for like, you would not and that would seem to be a bit of a nonsense if it is true. Chairman: I think you can take it the question of VAT has featured quite a lot in our inquiry and no doubt will continue to do so. Q143 Philip Davies: Following on, Peter, from what you said about demolition and the inadequacy of the statutory planning controls in that area, more generally how well matched to your needs are statutory planning controls and, apart from the issue of demolition, which was also in your written submission, what other changes would you like to see to statutory planning controls with particular regard to heritage? Mr Babb: My starting point would be "if it ain't broke don't fix it". There are some issues within the review of the consent procedure which makes me wonder whether it is going to produce the outcome that we want to see, particularly seeing what Liverpool said in their evidence, and I concur quite a lot with that. To my mind, what makes the real difference in terms of dealing with the historic environment is having very good conservation and design advice and people who can work with developers and architects to bring schemes forward. To me, a lot of that is not about statutory powers, it is about a process that can be operated between ourselves and the private sector in partnership. To me, most of our successes have usually been through that partnership approach. Sometimes you have to resort to other powers and we have used threats of compulsory purchase powers being used; two have been effective. I think it is very much a case of one size does not fit all and at the moment I think it is really how you operate the system sometimes rather than what it has within it that counts for so much. Mr Burchnall: I would repeat what we said in the written evidence, I do not think there are that many statutory controls we think should be changed. I think it can be the processes, the procedures and the timescale involved in those processes and, as Peter said, if you do get into a compulsory purchase position, then the process can be extremely lengthy and time consuming. I think it is those aspects rather than statutory controls themselves that should be amended. Q144 Philip Davies: Would you like to see any additional statutory planning controls on world heritage sites? Would that be helpful or not? Mr Burchnall: I think it is a difficult one. In terms of world heritage sites, they are clearly at the top of the pecking order in terms of heritage and they deserve to be specially recognised. I think from what has been going on in the city, we do think that the statutory controls are probably sufficient to give us the controls we need within the world heritage area. All the world heritage areas are conservation areas and any listed buildings within that area. It is difficult to see what additional controls you would need to introduce. I think there needs to be an increased recognition of the status of world heritage sites, nationally and regionally perhaps, and the value that a world heritage site can have. In terms of statutory controls, I think the statutory controls are probably there at the moment. Q145 Philip Davies: With regard to your relationship with English Heritage, perhaps I could start with you, Mike, because a couple of years ago to the ODPM Select Committee you said that "English Heritage and the city have perhaps not had the best relationship over the years". Could you perhaps tell us how that has progressed over the last two years and, more specifically, if English Heritage involvement were to be reduced, for example in giving advice on casework, would you, as local authorities, be able to cope with that? Mr Burchnall: I think the comments I made in January 2004 were about a changing atmosphere at that particular time. I think my own feeling was English Heritage during the 1990s had been very much a statutory control regime, not necessarily that easy to talk to and very much we would have a proposal, get a comment et cetera and we either lived with that comment or we did not. I think both English Heritage and ourselves recognised two or three years ago that it was very important we work more closely together, there were times we were getting at loggerheads with each other in terms of particular schemes. I think it is by partnership you can work together and do that. What I recognise in English Heritage over the last three or four years is that they have developed beyond statutory control to being an organisation which understands regeneration, understands local priorities and has a much wider range and review about heritage and education, et cetera. I think the HELP project, which you have got some information on, epitomises that. I was concerned last year when I thought English Heritage was perhaps moving back towards a more statutory and regulatory role rather than a wider role. I would fully support what I see in the regional office in English Heritage here, that it is a much wider perspective in relation to heritage and a much clearer understanding of local authorities, their priorities and regeneration priorities. I think if it did change, we would find it difficult to have those resources locally, basically. We rely on English Heritage to a large degree in terms of guidance, using best practice from elsewhere and also developing that relationship. Mr Babb: I think Manchester has had a very good and excellent relationship with English Heritage over a number of years, bar a couple of dips - it was probably only once or twice but we have not always seen eye to eye. I think we do benefit enormously from English Heritage in the region and probably in Manchester as well. We have access to very good expertise, we are a little bit concerned that they might not be involved so much in some listed buildings, Grade II listed buildings into the future. I think one thing that is very important for any organisation is consistency of advice through the negotiation of planning applications as the buildings come in, which can go on over a number of years and that is something that we have talked to English Heritage about now and again. We have probably one of the best arrangements for ourselves and the regional director: if there are any problems we will ring each other up and talk. That way we can resolve any issues before they get into a more formal arena. Ms Toms: Could I add to that and come back to a theme that I raised at the beginning which is heritage is more than about buildings. I think that is where the relationship we have in Manchester with English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund and other heritage bodies is becoming more and more important. I think it is that getting together, agreeing strategic priorities and aligning strategic priorities with the city of Manchester at the early stage of a project which is very important. The whole approach of English Heritage and the emphasis on their programmes of work in terms of education and outreach is becoming increasingly important, as the public tell us what they value is more than the historic built environment. I think English Heritage has been seen to be an evolving organisation, and it is a relatively small and under-resourced organisation, but they have done some first-rate work in Manchester with us by that strategic partnership being established in the case of particular projects right from the very beginning, so whatever decisions are made about a particular project or initiative are made jointly in the context of what the people of Manchester want. Q146 Mr Sanders: I am sorry about this, Mike, but I want to return to something else you said to the ODPM Select Committee which was: "In Liverpool we rely on English Heritage and Heritage Lottery funding". Bearing that in mind, are you banking on further support from the Heritage Fund for future large‑scale projects involving regeneration of historic areas? Mr Burchnall: Yes. Again, as Fran has outlined, the relationship with Heritage Lottery is absolutely vital, we have a townscape heritage initiative which is running in the Ropewalks area, the contributions from Heritage Lottery Fund to some of the major schemes in the city is absolutely vital, and in terms of Capital of Culture, continuing work on the library, on the museum, et cetera, on St George's Hall, Heritage Lottery Fund is absolutely vital to that. If you look at a local authority, the amount of capital we can put into some of these projects is extremely limited and therefore we do have to look to external agencies and partners. Heritage Lottery and the North West Development Association in the past have been very helpful of in terms of particular schemes. Q147 Mr Sanders: Can I ask both Councils, given that over the next few years we are not going to see the growth in heritage money that we have seen perhaps in the last decade, what impact is that going to have on your plans over the next decade? Mr Burchnall: It is almost an impossible question to answer, but Liverpool over the last ten years has been a city which has had a lot of grants, whether it be Objective 1, HLF, et cetera. I hope we are moving to becoming a city that does not need so many grants in certain areas. Therefore if it is reduced, then hopefully we may be able, through our own momentum, to continue forward, but clearly those major schemes do need significant amounts of funding. Again one of the points we have made in the written submission is the world heritage site has a management plan, there are costs associated with doing that management plan, with implementing various things within that. Again it goes beyond the City Council's own resources and we will have to look to external funding. Ms Toms: There are two aspects to this. I would say that Heritage Lottery Fund was set up to really reinvest in some of our major significant buildings and that is probably coming to an end; it is phase one as far as I am concerned. I think we now need to look at is the nature of that role that HLF has to play in the future and I think that will be changing. There is no doubt at all that there is a fundamental gap when it comes to some of our significant buildings and major regeneration initiatives, and if it does not come under HLF funding, then where that funding will come from in the future is an interesting question. I would hope that what we have learned from is the successful interventions that HLF have given and, as the agenda for investment in heritage is changing, that we learn from that and make sure that the big Lottery funding is directed toward the next generation of priorities for our heritage, which will not necessarily be major buildings. I think that is where we should take comfort because a lot of the heritage interventions are on a relatively modest scale. If you think of major heritage assets in a city, major museums and galleries, it is true that Manchester has had a significant source of funding from HLF, but we have dealt with our major museums, galleries and major assets and so on. What we now need to be is a little bit more inventive and I think that is where bodies, such as the big Lottery, come in. The key to it will be working in partnership; we will no longer be able to do it as simple applications to a major funding body. We need to agree our strategic priorities and then look at the funding in an inventive and creative way to solve those problems. Alan Keen: I think in your full response to Helen Southworth you have answered the detailed questions I was going to ask, but I will open it up a little bit more. First of all, can I say it is very encouraging to see so many people interested to come along after work and take part. It is important to understand that this Committee is not representing Government, it is representing Parliament and therefore all of you. If you were able to write the odd paragraph in our report for DCMS to respond to, what would your favourite paragraphs contain? I have not got the courage to knock on Gordon Brown's door tomorrow afternoon, the day before Budget, and ask for 17.5% VAT to be taken off. Mr Hall: But I know some of you will! Q148 Alan Keen: Some of you will! Ms Toms: Perhaps I will kick off before my planning colleagues come up with the statutory instruments that might be required; I am a much simpler being. I think it is very simple: I think we need at a local level a recognition that the strategic priorities of a local area are paramount. I would like to see government bodies and non‑departmental government bodies working much closer together to align the activity of their departments and their work with local strategic priorities. I think the local area agreements give us that mechanism because each of those bodies is fulfilling government agendas. Those government agendas are common to local authorities and to those bodies and it would be good to see a more strategic aligning of those priorities. Perhaps, for a second, forgetting that one is a Lottery body and one has a different statutory obligation, what we are about is improving the lives of local people in an area and making sure that that investment is placed where we need it so whether it is priorities for young people, crime disorder targets or the health agenda, that we make sure that all of that work is joined up and is addressing those weaknesses in whatever way we can. If that requires statutory changes, then that is what we need to do, but I would say that that closer working together and strategic working is absolutely crucial in Manchester's case. Q149 Alan Keen: I am sure the planners have ideas as well? Mr Babb: From seeing the new planning system and the timescales involved in taking various aspects of process forward and the amount of paperwork involved, I think my view would be, whatever happens within the White Paper, the outcomes should be about efficiency and effectiveness, they should not be about over-bureaucratising a system. It should be a system that you should find your way through fairly easily and starts to give us something of what we need at a local level. I think over a period of time we have suggested various things, and some of these are in our submission, and we have got to remember at the end of the day a lot of the time what we are judged on is what happens on the ground rather than sometimes what happens in a piece of legislation or a planning policy statement. It is seeing some of these buildings and spaces being brought back into use and about how communities respond to their historic environments. That to me, that is the crucial thing, it is the outcome that is important. Let us make sure it is easier to get to that outcome. Mr Burchnall: Yes, I would concur with that. I think it is about simplifying things. Peter has mentioned the new planning system, and the amount of paperwork and bureaucracy associated with that is extremely worrying. There is a part of the White Paper which really needs to say how regeneration assets or regeneration strategy fits in with the local development framework, there is a lot of confusion in relation to that still, and also in terms of the City Council, the world heritage management plan and how that fits in with a local development framework. It is about making a number of relatively minor alterations to statutory controls and mechanisms which we put in the paper but simplifying it and making it easier to get to the outcomes we all want to achieve at the end of the day. Alan Keen: Can I say as someone who went down to help them in London a lot of years ago from the North East of England, I am very proud of what has been achieved in the North, and Birmingham, as well in city centres. You are really making a vast difference and I am quite proud. Thank you. Q150 Mr Sanders: I wanted to come back on what Fran was saying because I wonder what mechanism do you need then to bring together the non‑statutory bodies to agree the supremacy of a local plan? Is it a question more about democracy and democratising the quangos in order that they are accountable to someone other than Whitehall? Ms Toms: Yes, that is very tempting! I think a lot of these things work best informally and at a local level. If you look at the successes that we have had recently, most of them have been about informal networks, about getting together with Heritage Lottery Fund, with English Heritage and agreeing what is our joint shared interest in a particular initiative or building, whatever it is. I would say it is very simple what we need to do. It is amazing that there are very few networks between non‑departmental governmental bodies in the regions; they all have an umbilical cord back to London. I think the regional agenda is going to change that. That is where the answer lies because the people who work in the regions know the regions and know what will work for that area. I think it is incredibly refreshing that you have come out of London and I think you need to do it more, because this is how you will understand what we need to ask of Government. I think it is relatively easy to deliver so long as the bodies are freed up to do it because they worry, they panic - when we in our submission start to talk about aligning funds - they worry about their strategic powers and "This is Lottery money and that is governed by this law and that law", but if we say, "It is all public money. We all agree what the joint priorities for an area are so let's just make it as simple as possible to deliver". Q151 Janet Anderson: Once a property falls into serious disrepair obviously reclaiming it becomes far more difficult and costly, and I think you have both mentioned the problem of attracting private sector developers to sites outside the city centre where buildings are perhaps more likely to suffer from long-term neglect. I think, Peter, earlier you also touched on the problem of requiring owners of listed buildings to undertake repairs, that the powers are rarely enforced and when you try to, it makes life quite difficult for you because you cannot recover your costs. Can anything more be done by central government to help you in authorities to stop the decline before it gets too bad? Mr Babb: What I was alluding to were the Urgent Notices we have to serve where we have to recoup the monies through a court process. If that was made a land charge, that would be more helpful because it is easier to recoup a land charge, recover a land charge, than it is a civil debt through court proceedings. That would help with certainty; basic money means that funding put at risk through doing the work could have much more chance of being recovered through the process rather than not. That would be very helpful, that would mean we in Manchester would have a lot more confidence in going about implementing a strategy to deal with our buildings at risk. That one simple change from turning the Urgent Works Notices into a land charge would be extremely helpful. Mr Burchnall: Yes, I agree with that. We have to fund it and then roll forward that funding, at the moment it is a difficulty. I think the other thing is there used to be things called section 77 grants, where private sector owners of listed buildings could achieve some grant aid in areas where other grants were not available. That is no longer available. I think that would certainly help in those buildings which cannot attract the Objective 1 funding, the HLF funding or other types of funding, so a mechanism to deal with those particular types of buildings. They are not impossible buildings to deal with; it does take a lot of time and effort, and again we have got a number of notable successes, but you know the longer the time it takes to deal with those buildings, there is more chance of those buildings deteriorating to a point where it is difficult to save them. Mr Babb: I agree with what was said about maybe some grant funding, but I think we have to be aware that a number of owners of listed properties would rather they were not listed - and probably are not there anyway - to achieve higher land value so we have to be a little bit careful with how we deal with this and to me having a better system for the Notices would be very helpful. Q152 Helen Southworth: I would like to ask you a challenging question, I suppose in a way, and I am wondering how to phrase it given I am sitting in Liverpool. As a Member of Parliament with a constituency midway between Liverpool and Manchester and with constituents who have a very keen interest in our local heritage and our local environment, I am wondering whether there is a role that the two huge cities, which are making such considerable progress but are also drawing in quite considerable resources from the North West, can play in supporting developments in local authorities around the areas? Mr Burchnall: I certainly think we can do, probably not financially but maybe through best practice and the techniques that we have developed. There are forums within Manchester and Liverpool and the region and the sub-region for urban design issues and heritage issues, so I think we can swap expertise and we can deal with that issue. I think the thing to remember is as the two drivers of the economy in the region, Liverpool and Manchester, grow, that is good for the region generally and those intervening bits should benefit from that as well. Mr Babb: I would not underestimate the huge amount of resources and staff time that go into bringing some buildings back into use and that huge commitment that is needed from various parts of the organisation. Unless you can replicate that in other areas, then potentially, that will not be so successful. Q153 Helen Southworth: If I could follow on from that to ask about access and increasing access. Certainly, Liverpool, in your evidence you focused quite a bit on the work that you were doing in terms of giving people opportunities to come in and participate - the heritage open days and those types of things - and as we have been going around today we have seen quite a focus on how important interpretation is and understanding what that heritage is and where it came from not just what it looks like today, not just the architecture. Mr Burchnall: I think that is absolutely right. It came out of an opinion poll really about people's heritage and really people wanted more information and access to resources. The heritage open days certainly have helped the projects in local schools. Again, if you can meet people's aspirations in that sense, it gives them a feeling of greater community and gives them a feeling of protecting their own assets and working towards those assets. It is self‑perpetuating, in a sense, if we can start it and it will help communities help themselves. Ms Toms: We have seen a lot of projects in Manchester recently which have demonstrated that. What we are seeing is a changing interest in the public: they are much more interested in not just the buildings but their own heritage and their own roots, particularly in cities like Manchester and Liverpool, where our communities have grown historically from immigrant communities who are now very interested in understanding what brought them to the city, and what has made those cities great is the people. A lot of our most successful projects recently have not just been the landmark building projects but have been things like HLF have recently funded an archaeological dig in the north of Manchester, a very deprived area, which is a very small-scale project that started off as a school's project and now has become a major project across the city, because people are very interested in their own area and in archaeological finds. It is at a very small level, but it has not just brought in school children which is where the project started but has brought in a much wider community, and at the same time it has reduced levels of crime in those areas while the dig is going on. It has opened the eyes of the school children to that as another skill and as another job potentially. Probably our most successful projects have been more about those sorts of projects, and Victoria Baths is a very good example; the interest and love for that project is absolutely astounding. It is not just about that physical building, it is very much about what that building was and what it meant to generations: the fact it was not just a local swimming pool, it was where they had their daily baths and took their washing, it was a community facility. That is what people remember about those facilities and that is what gives the support for any of these projects. We are following the lead and listening to what people want. I think it is becoming much more important in terms of the heritage agenda. I am really pleased that English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund have picked up on that and are happy to work with us to support those sorts of projects. Chairman: I do not think we have any more questions. Thank you very much for your time. Memorandum submitted by English Partnerships
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Paul Spooner, North West Regional Director, English Partnerships, Mr Jim Gill, Chief Executive, Liverpool Vision, and Ms Heather Emery, Head of Design and Built Environment, North West Development Agency (RENEW NW), gave evidence.
Chairman: Can I welcome Paul Spooner from English Partnerships, Jim Gill from Liverpool Vision and Heather Emery from the North West Development Agency. I am here to invite my colleague Alan Keen to start the questions. Q154 Alan Keen: Good evening. Heritage perception and regeneration go hand in hand, but presumably it is not quite as straightforward as that. Do the developers agree and make it easy? What are the problems basically? Mr Spooner: I will kick off, if I may. First of all, there is growing recognition within the private sector that historic assets play an important role in regeneration, in creating, protecting and preserving a sense of place within an area. You referred just now to city centre schemes; many city centre schemes are built around historic landmarks. English Partnerships has been involved in supporting the Grainger town development in Newcastle which is a very historic quarter of the city centre. I think the private sector and developers recognise that these assets do have an important role to play in maintaining that sense of place but also in creating attractions in their own right which will bring more visitors and investors to the area. For example, I can think of Brittany Place in Birmingham, which we mentioned just now. Brittany Place is particularly attractive because of its canalside setting which is a very important industrial and historic feature of the city but provides effectively the attraction for private investment alongside the canal which has brought further development. Whilst obviously there will be times when you will hear comments that suggest perhaps in some cases developers may see heritage from time to time as a constraint on their investment, in our experience English Partnerships providing you work very carefully in the masterplanning of the schemes with the private sectors, landowners and closely with people involved in supporting heritage, English Heritage, for example, can achieve an outcome that everybody benefits from. Mr Gill: Just to follow that up, if I may. Developers are interested in making money, so they will invest money and they want to make a return on that money. Some developers will see themselves as making a longer-term investment; some see themselves as making a shorter-term investment. If you are making a short-term investment, you will be less concerned about issues about heritage and sense of place because you will be in and out quite quickly. Our experience in Liverpool increasingly, and I think in the majority of cases, is that investors do recognise the added value of a sense of place, and where heritage assets help to create that sense of place, they recognise the benefits that arise from it. I think the sorts of issues that arise are largely to do with details of interpretation of appropriate design. That may arise out of financial considerations or sometimes it may arise out of a different view of juxtaposition, different architectures for example. I think by and large, certainly developers in the city centre are sufficiently mature to understand the benefits that arise from creating quality places that add value to their investment. Ms Emery: I think the quality of place and the sense of place is something that at the Agency we have recognised and that, as a public body, we want to help investment and encourage investment by developers into a place. Therefore if we have supported people like Liverpool City Council through the URC in the investment in the public realm, that is giving a basis on which the developers can see a confidence in the place. It all helps to generate that feeling of achieving a sense of place and at the Agency we understand and value just what that can bring. Q155 Alan Keen: I think Adrian has already mentioned the fact that we are not going to see the same growth in funding going in. We have got the Olympics, that may take some money away from the Lottery for heritage. We have obviously learnt a lot over the last ten to 14 years or so. How do you see the picture over the next five or ten years and is there anything that needs to be addressed by government? Mr Gill: I will try and address some of those issues. Liverpool in particular has had an awful lot of funding over the past 40 years or so, maybe 50 years, from a variety of public sector interventions. What we are trying to achieve in the city now is removing that sense of grant-dependency, the sorts of things Mike Burchnall referred to earlier, and we are making progress. We are using public money to encourage individual developments and also to create public spaces that in themselves add value. I think today you have been in the Ropewalks area. That was an area which received a chunk of public funding, particularly in the 1990s and in the earlier part of this century. That public funding went into creating quality public realm and a number of individual developments; some of them to do with residential, with leisure and commercial spaces and with the arts, like a facts centre. It was actually a brand new development in the middle of a conservation area. In 1996/1997, you could not get £100 per square foot for residential development in one of those areas, so you needed grant support to make it work. Nowadays, for new build residential development of high quality in the city, you will get £300 plus. Certainly for some of the renovation, restorations and existing buildings in the Ropewalks for residential and leisure, you do not need grant support. The amount of activity we have seen going on in that area does not need public funding any more, although there are still some parts of the area where the public realm has not been completed and there you will see continued dereliction. We are moving to a situation in which less public sector funding is required for any one given development. I think there is a significant issue in respect of some tensions between developer requirements to make a commercial return on their investment and some other requirements that may arise from heritage or perhaps more appropriate conservation issues. There are still occasions when conservation issues impose a cost, which without some public funding is not worthwhile to the developer achieving that. My overall impression is that the level of funding goes in through the heritage network, and the heritage and conservation network is nowhere near large enough to meet the demands of that network to allow us to maintain the progress that we make. Q156 Helen Southworth: English Partnerships, in your evidence you gave quite a focus on consulting local people. I think you said, "Consultation with the local and adjoining communities and stakeholders is key to our approach, particularly in relation to heritage buildings which are central to local community identity". Can you give us more on that? Can you give some examples of where you have carried out that consultation, what kinds of things you have done and perhaps where you have changed some of your proposals as a result of it? Mr Spooner: It is true, as we have said in our evidence, in local communities - I do not just mean residents but businesses and people living in the local area where there is meant to be regeneration and there is a need for improvement in the area, indeed where they have sought those improvements in terms of improving the environment and housing and creating the basis for greater prosperity in their area - it is absolutely essential that the community is fully involved in the design and development of the planning of the areas as well as the detailed implementation of those plans. I think we all learn from experience. In one particular example in East Lancashire, the regional plans the local authority had in around 2002 were to demolish a significant number of older houses, many of which were in very poor condition, but following an unsuccessful CPO in that area, the plans were reviewed. English Partnerships worked closely with English Heritage and the Prince's Foundation to come up with an alternative proposal, which is not our own proposal but developed by local people through a whole long week of Enquiry by Design. That is a process which involved local residents and businesses, in this case about 300, sitting around the table with professionals like ourselves and agencies providing support and jointly coming up with a scheme which met local aspirations. In that particular case, the scheme has led to a completely revised proposal where a large number of properties will be retained, albeit converted for modern use, and they will be changed to meet the needs of local people in terms of expanding families, but relatively few properties will be demolished. That plan has now been approved and with the local community and we have established a regeneration partnership which is going to appoint a design and architect-led development consortium to design improvements to those homes and build new houses where demolition has to take place. I think involving the community is central to any planning and development in terms of regeneration, but from our own experience we have learnt lessons from involving the community early in the design of their own communities. It is quite important that agencies are able to be flexible and not necessarily see that the first proposal they had in mind was the right one. In this case, I think we have got a much better scheme and one which we know, from the response of the private sector, that the development community is very interested in implementing. That is an example in East Lancashire; there are many other examples where involving communities at the early stage through Enquiry by Design and detailed consultation on the planning of areas have led to schemes which not only have been fully supported but also were schemes which have been very attractive to the private sector. Q157 Helen Southworth: Does Liverpool Vision have something to comment on that process? Mr Gill: Liverpool Vision was created in 1999. In 2000 Vision published the strategic regeneration framework for the city centre which set out, I suppose in one sense, a vision for the future of the city which included statements, really fairly simple stuff, on where one would expect the city to go and where the strengths of the city are. The process of getting to that strategic regeneration framework and the 12 months involved there included very wide consultation with the general public, in fact from all over Merseyside, not just from Liverpool because the city centre, of course, is a much wider area than just the city itself. There was broad consultation and I think broad acceptance for the strategy that emerged. In terms of the implementation of that strategy, obviously individual projects will go through detailed consultation and the larger and more contentious those projects are, usually the wider and longer the consultation. In the last six months or so, we have been working jointly with the City Council and we have been developing not masterplans but planning frameworks to help advise development control. Moving the work in the Ropewalks to the next stage, looking at areas like the Baltic Triangle, which is the area between the Ropewalks and the waterfront of King's Dock, we have been involved in consultation again with businesses and residents in looking at the way in which those areas should be developed, otherwise the danger is that the pressure of demand, in particular for new residential development and leisure development in the city centre at the moment, will swamp areas which have got a history and a heritage. They do not have the same sort of iconic status as some of the buildings on the waterfront for example, but still are important areas where we trying to maintain a mix of uses that are probably a bit truer to the history of those areas than simple, straightforward residential development. There is fairly broad consultation and the consultation varies from project to project. I think the other thing we have tried to do in the past few years is to explain what we are doing to school children, so we have a dedicated part-time education liaison officer within Liverpool Vision, partly funded by ourselves and partly funded by the Regional Development Agency's SRB programme. What we are trying to do there is find a way of introducing what the city centre is and all of the projects we are promoting in the city centre into the curriculum, so that school children can understand the way in which what is happening in their city fits into some of the things that they are learning at school. I think that is quite important particularly because it is getting at children early. I hope it is broadening the range of information that they get about what is it that makes their city work and what is important in their city. Q158 Chairman: Just following on from Helen's question, earlier today the Committee went to the Welsh Streets and obviously that is a part of the city where quite a number of demolitions are proposed. We stopped outside a house that had in its window, "Save our homes. Stop the demolitions". Would you, therefore, accept that this is a scheme that has not yet carried the community with it and might there not be a case for, as Mr Spooner described, going back and looking at it again to try to get a scheme that will demand the support of the community? Mr Gill: Welsh Streets is outside my area of capability. Liverpool Vision operates in the city centre, it is a fairly tight city centre, so I am relieved to say that it is not my area of responsibility. I am sure that the conclusion which you are suggesting might be one that people would arrive at quite easily, but then what you have seen is one response to a proposal and not the community's response, I guess. Mr Spooner: I think it is very true that they are wooing many areas where there is planned major change, particularly areas where there is recognition through very detailed analysis of the condition of properties that some of those, indeed quite a lot of those, properties do not have a long-term, viable future life where there needs to be demolition and redevelopment. I think it is absolutely essential in those cases that process of change is well communicated to all the community and all the community has the opportunity to be engaged in understanding those plans and indeed contributing to them. The example I gave was a situation in which what was decided at the very beginning in East Lancashire was the easiest way to deal with a lot of very poor housing, to clear a larger number of houses and start again effectively. I think you can take a more balanced view of that, as indeed was the case through the consultation in East Lancashire, but in some areas there is a need for considerable demolition. We have to recognise that many poorer older houses are not necessarily fit for purpose, not even fit for the families that currently occupy them in terms of their own growth and expansion, and do not provide necessarily the public space or amenities that people would expect. Also many of those houses have been, for perhaps 50 years, going through a period of general repair and maintenance, obviously drawing on grant funding wherever possible, but at some point for those houses it will need to be considered that that continued repair and maintenance will not produce the types of homes that are now needed. Provided local people are involved in the process of change and fully aware of the reasons - and particularly the physical condition of properties means that they do not have a future viable life - then I think it is quite reasonable they should be considered for comprehensive redevelopment. What is important is those people who are affected also have the opportunities to participate in the design and development of the future and indeed to find homes within the future plans. What we found in Liverpool and indeed in East Lancashire was that alongside investment in new property, new development must be an equal amount of investment and providing people with access to the finance and the loan, the sort of financial support to enable them to bridge up to buy new homes and/or rented property within the development. Q159 Chairman: To follow that up slightly, this is obviously a policy which is not just happening in the Welsh Streets, it is happening in a number of areas in the North West. It is argued by some that the homes are not fit for habitation, yet it is the people who live in them who are arguing that they are and who are objecting, or at least in some cases are objecting. It seems to me that at the very least what you failed to do is persuade people what is on offer to them, if their homes are demolished, is a better standard of accommodation and better homes. If you succeeded in persuading them of that, then perhaps you would not encounter the degree of opposition that exists. Can I ask North West Development Agency - since this is a regional policy - whether you would accept that is not something you have yet succeeded in persuading people on? Ms Emery: I can answer but the North West Development Agency is not involved in housing, so I can give an answer, but it is not based on our policy as an Agency. I think as Paul pointed out, very often it is not taking the community along with the proposals right from the beginning. Another observation I would make is that often the case is that they are not putting the time in at the beginning to do the analysis and maybe the characterisation work that is required to have a full and informed understanding about what it is you are dealing with in terms of those homes. It is not just about the physical, it is also about the social. It takes time to assimilate that sort of information and I think - and it is a personal observation -that perhaps that time has not always been spent. Q160 Janet Anderson: I could not agree more with what Heather and Paul have said about the need for early consultation, because I have got some of this going on in my own constituency. I would like to ask you whether you think there could have been better guidance to local authorities about the way in which they involve the local community. I am thinking in particular about some of the letters that were sent out to my constituents which were very insensitively worded. Sometimes there is a tendency to think if you have distributed leaflets and held a couple of meetings, then you have consulted everyone, and that is not necessarily the case. My short question is, could better guidance be given to the local authorities and others that are managing new schemes? Mr Spooner: I do not know about the particular case you are referring to, but I would say broadly speaking there has been a lot of lessons learned over the last ten years about consultation and engagement of local people in the development of areas and particularly areas that are going to be changed quite dramatically. I think it is very important that that experience where it is has worked - and I can think of examples, say, in East Lancashire where we have had particular experience recently, but there are many other areas - is recorded and shared, so best practice in terms of the way to engage local communities in the process of change is spread across the country. English Partnerships has a role there because part of our role in supporting urban renaissance is to promote good practice. We do that by producing best practice guides and holding workshops that bring people together from different local authorities to share their experiences. For example, we have a workshop on housing market renewal which is being organised in April and that is two years after the start of housing market renewals. We look at those areas that have involved local people in the design and development of neighbourhood renewal schemes to see what we can learn from that experience. I do think it is important that best practice is shared. However, I do feel the process of housing market renewal does require in some cases the level of transformation and change which means that even with every bit of consultation there will be some people who feel that this is not the outcome they were seeking. The overall aim must be to design with local people a scheme which improves the quality of life and environment and creates future prosperity for that area. Mr Gill: Can I make an observation on that point as well. It is not one which I make from personal involvement so it may be prejudice as much as observation, but Paul is right about best practice. It seems to me, as he said, that we have learned an awful lot, and I am sure that Liverpool City Council has learned a lot over the last ten years and does not insensitively send out letters, certainly not deliberately. Best practice works both ways and I know that Pathfinders in the early days were under huge pressure to spend the resources that were allocated to them. I am sure the Chancellor will not change practice on the basis of this conversation but annuality is not best practice. Obliging the local authority to spend money by 31 March, and if it does not, it loses it, often makes people rush things rather than take the necessary time to do things. I think there is a sense in which the balance and different priorities affect things in different ways and sometimes that may explain why people are insensitive or rush into things. Q161 Philip Davies: Just to do this to death to a certain extent, would you accept that the term "public consultation" has got a pretty bad reputation in that many people feel on all sorts of things that public consultation is something that authorities, or whoever it might be, go through because they have to go through, rather than with any genuine intent to listen to what that consultation throws up? Therefore many people will not take part in that consultation because they think there is no point, the decision has already been made and they are jumping through hoops now to say they have had public consultation. Apart from best practice of local authorities, how do you persuade the general public that the consultation is genuine and their view is going to make a difference, because if people do not feel that, they are not going to take part because they think their view will not make a difference? How do you persuade them that their view will make a difference? Mr Spooner: I think, in our experience, you do not do it by sending out leaflets saying, "Come to a public meeting". You have to be a lot more sophisticated these days and certainly you have to continue to involve local people throughout the process not just once, not just in drawing up the masterplan. English Partnerships has been involved in East Manchester where, by any definition, it has gone through and is going through dramatic change in terms of a lot of clearance of run-down industrial buildings and a lot of brownfield sites which have been remediated and brought back into proper use for public benefit. All of that work with East Manchester, with Manchester City Council, has been successful only because everybody involved has repeatedly engaged local people at the local level by being at the street level, involving people in the changes, not standing back and inviting people to come to public meetings but ensuring there are people on hand locally to give advice, counselling and support to people during a period of change. We are investing, as English Partnerships, significantly in an area of East Manchester known as New Islington which has required the demolition of a lot of, quite frankly, very poor condition 1960s housing which local people were very pleased to see the back of, but they wanted to be involved in the design and development of the new housing which replaced it. For example, the architects on part of the scheme have designed the individual properties to meet the bespoke needs of those families who want to stay in the area and want homes that meet their purposes today. That has been very successful and that was not achieved by public consultation, by the traditional approach of public consultation, but by having people from, in this case, the City Council and the regeneration partnership on the ground locally, working on site with local communities, involving people and sitting around tables endlessly to discuss how those schemes and designs might be taken forward. There is no panacea, but one example of good practice is not to talk about public consultation but to seriously engage local people at the local level in the design of the scheme. Ms Emery: Could I just add to that, RENEW, the centre of excellence is working ---- Are you aware of RENEW? Q162 Philip Davies: Yes. Ms Emery: It is the centre of excellence for the North West and they are developing different ways of understanding regeneration and good practice in regeneration and in community engagement and how they can pass on the good practice through masterclasses and exemplars. That whole process has started and it is about learning lessons. Q163 Mr Sanders: Simply, the bottom line for any local authority that makes a decision which upsets people is they do have the power to remove councillors via the ballot box. If your organisations get it wrong or make the wrong decision, how do people get rid of you? Mr Spooner: More often than not in English Partnerships we put the local authority in funds, so it comes back to us through them eventually, I guess. I think the important thing is that, as English Partnerships, we are only one partner and we are part of a partnership locally which is often rooted in local accountability through the local authority being a partner in that scheme, so we work closely with local authorities across the country. Again, an example at the moment in Manchester where we are working with the Heritage Lottery Fund and English Heritage is the Gorton Monastery area, which is a fantastic listed building but we happen to own the site adjacent to it. If we were to operate in a completely independent way, we could have taken that site and gone to the market, got a developer for that site and said, "Well, you work with the Council", but no, we feel a responsibility, as the national regeneration agency, to work hand in glove with the local authorities, local members, local councillors and local people on the ground. In this particular case of Gorton Monastery, we have said our land and the refurbishment of the monastery will work as one scheme and we will work with the local authority - and we are - to appoint a developer who is sympathetic to the needs of the local community. I do not think agencies like ourselves can operate independently any more. We have to work hand in glove with local accountability. Mr Gill: If you bear with me, I will tell you a little bit about Liverpool Vision. Liverpool Vision is an Urban Regeneration Company. It was the first of the regeneration companies established in 1999. The initiative came from English Partnerships, the local authority and the Regional Development Agency. The company is an independent company limited by guarantee. It has 13 board members. The board members are the members of the company, although we have representation from the local authority, the leader of the council, the leader of the opposition group and the chief executive. Paul is on our board as a representative of English Partnerships, and the chief executive of the Regional Development Agency is on the board. Between them they pay my salary and they cover the operating costs of the company, some of the feasibility work and framework planning work that I have talked about. We have influence and no formal powers. We have influence because they have asked us to be here and because of the quality of the non-public sector members of the board. We do not have the power to take decisions on anything: we do not have any planning powers, we do not hold land and do not let contracts to undertake that. We work by persuasion, that is persuasion of our core funding partners, as I call them, it is the persuasion of the businesses that we work with and the persuasion of the communities in the areas that we work. The City Council, English Partnerships or the Development Agency could get rid of us tomorrow by simply saying, "Sorry, at the end of this year we will not be funding you any more". If councillors start losing their seats because they have been listening to us, then I am pretty sure indirectly the electorate will get rid of them as well. Mr Hall: I think just for the record, with the scheme we have been talking about there is 72% approval for this particular redevelopment and only one poster in one window, so I do not think there is that much of an outrage about the proposals that have been put forward. Chairman: There were a few more. Q164 Mr Hall: There may have been a few more. Can I ask a specific question for English Partnerships, the Government has just given English Partnerships responsibility for taking ownership of 67 redundant hospitals. Has English Partnerships got any brief to repair and maintain those hospitals while decisions about this proposal are being made? Mr Spooner: We do have responsibility for the 67. They have already required some work. We do have management responsibility for the 67 and are taking that responsibility very seriously and yes, there are more coming our way. Q165 Mr Hall: What basis is there to determine what is going to be demolished or what should be repaired? Mr Spooner: Within the protocol for the hospital sites and the large number of hospital buildings, those formal sites are very significant in historical terms and very important in the national heritage view. Knowing we were going to take on board those heritage sites, we sat down with English Heritage and started to use their expertise and knowledge in order to determine what could or could not take place. That has continued and we have very close liaison with English Partnerships and the local planning authorities in the areas where the hospital sites are to ensure the plans for future development respect their heritage and retain the buildings that need to be retained. To give you one example, in the North West at the moment we are looking for a development partner for a major hospital outside Preston called Ribbleton Hospital. It has a number of listed buildings, but for the other buildings English Partnerships has agreed a conservation statement which we are inviting shortlisted developers to set their proposals against so we do put them out to tender. We take very seriously the responsibilities we have to protect their heritage sites, where it is appropriate, and we are getting guidance and good advice where we might go about that. What is interesting in this case and in other cases is private sector developers are equally keen to invest in those sites but to invest in the way that we require. Q166 Mr Hall: Who has the final decision about which sites are retained and redeveloped? Is that English Partnerships' decision? Mr Spooner: The decisions that are made in relation to each of these sites are guided and directed by the local planning policy. The decision to develop a site, for example for housing and in the case of Ribbleton Hospital the proposal is for building something like 580 new affordable homes, is made in the context of the formal planning policy, formal decisions made by English Partnerships, by our boards, and the decision is made in line with approved planning policies. It is not the case where English Partnerships are looking forward to bring in sites in the Green Belt or Zone 4 residential. Q167 Mr Hall: It is interesting that you mention the Green Belt because in my constituency, in the Osterley Green site which is in the Green Belt, we have a redundant sanatorium in an appalling state of disrepair. The development with the Crown Estate has come forward with a plan to redevelop this for residential development. Because it is a listed building, in the Green Belt and it is covered by planning guidance, the Government has got to consider this for redevelopment. What have you got to say about that? Mr Spooner: English Partnerships would continue to be guided by the local planning authorities. The local planning authorities' view was the only way that building would be maintained was if it was to be developed for some form of housing that is considered as a suitable exception to the planning policy. That is something we would consider is not our intention or any intention for the 67 sites to go forward with. Q168 Mr Hall: Just for clarification, because national government policy exempts listed hospital buildings from green belt constraints, this is why this particular land can be developed? My local council has no control over that? Mr Spooner: In that case, if it is a governmental planning policy, we would be guided by that. Q169 Janet Anderson: Just on that, Mr Spooner, could I ask you, in what circumstances would you think it feasible to demolish a former Victorian workhouse if the locals wanted to demolish it and new build a new community hospital on the same site? Is that an acceptable reason for you to demolish? Mr Spooner: It is a hypothetical example. Let us take it as a hypothetical example without referring to a specific one. If there were no constraints on the demolition of that property in terms of policy - for example it is not a listed building or it is a building which the local planning authority believe could be redeveloped and particularly redeveloped for community benefit, perhaps to provide new health benefits - English Partnerships would seek to do that with the PCTs, the Primary Care Trusts. We have examples within the 67 Trusts. Although we have an important role to play in many of the new homes, we do recognise, and we have many examples, where the schemes involve more than housing; they do involve in many cases new health facilities, community facilities, new walks and open spaces and in some cases new spaces. In Chester we do have a case which will help create jobs for local people and we are trying to create a scheme for planning policy that meets fully the community. Q170 Philip Davies: One issue that keeps coming up in all of the evidence we get is VAT and the cost of repairs to historic buildings. It came up with Manchester and Liverpool and again today. What do each of you think would be the implication for you and for the private sector of the VAT rate staying as it is at 17.5% or reduced to 5%? What do you see the implications of that decision being? Mr Spooner: The first thing to say is English Partnerships is involved in a number of projects which do seek to retain and convert property and to bring investment partners in to converting property where houses can be retained for sites like a soap-street scene but looking to expand and improve them. In those cases, we do feel we are operating with an additional cost base because of VAT again and other schemes that involve new development. We concur with points made earlier by Manchester and Liverpool, the VAT implications of refurbishment are disadvantageous compared with the non‑VAT implications of new build. Therefore anything that seeks to reduce the VAT implication of 18% to 5% on refurbished property would help to make schemes more viable and potentially reduce the public investment to make them work. Ms Emery: I can only agree with that. Similarly, we have been involved in investing in the restoration of buildings, and changes on the VAT would obviously help those sorts of proposals. Chairman: If my colleagues do not have any further questions, thank you very much. |