Examination of Witnesses (Questions 235-239)
MS JUDITH
CLIGMAN, MS
KATE CLARKE
AND MR
DUNCAN MCCALLUM
11 JULY 2006
Q235 Chair: Would you say who you are
and which organisation you represent please?
Mr McCallum: I am Duncan McCallum,
Policy Director of English Heritage.
Ms Cligman: I am Judith Cligman.
I am Director of Policy and Research at the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Ms Clarke: And I am Kate Clarke.
I am Deputy Director of Policy and Research at the Heritage Lottery
Fund.
Q236 Chair: Can I start by asking
you whether you think that the role of heritage in the regeneration
of coastal towns is any different from its role in other towns
and cities and whether you can give any specific examples?
Mr McCallum: English Heritage
has been investing in seaside towns and coastal towns for a long
time. We recognise that there are specific qualities and challenges
faced by those towns. If we take, for example, the extreme climate,
more maintenance is needed than for many other buildings. There
tend to be a large number of listed buildings, a large number
of public buildings, so there is a range of issues that are perhaps
broader and more challenging than in other areas, so I think they
do stand out as a specific group. Although we have never targeted
them as a single group, when you look at the figures and the way
we have been targeting our funding in the last few years, we have
put a significant proportion of funding into these areas. Perhaps
I can give you a couple of examples. In our area grant funding,
that is principally to the conservation areas, around 20% of our
regeneration funding since 1999 has gone into coastal towns; that
is around £10 million. In our individual building grants
something over 10% has gone into buildings in and around coastal
towns, and also in our places of worship grants 14-15% of our
funding has gone into these. We recognise that there are particular
issues that need addressing and in a way they are slightly different
from other historic towns.
Ms Cligman: I would make the point
first of all that the Heritage Lottery Fund has a very broad remit
so we do not just fund historic buildings; we also fund the cultural
sector, so museums, libraries and archives; we fund biodiversity
projects too which is something that people tend to associate
less with us. Of course, we also fund cultural and intangible
heritage, so cultural traditions. Our attitude to the role of
heritage and culture in coastal towns is that they are extremely
important in defining the distinctive character of those towns
and very often coastal towns do have a very distinctive heritage.
Indeed, the whole nature of the seaside town grew up around a
certain history and social development which means they have a
very special heritage. They also, of course, have particular attractions
which are associated with coastal towns, such as public parks
that are particularly designed to attract tourists as well as
the more general leisure market of the people that live there.
Clearly, therefore, we recognise that there is an extremely important
heritage in those towns. We have put a lot of our resources into
English coastal resorts. Over £66 million has gone into 43
townscape heritage schemes in towns which are defined as English
coastal resorts and we have given more than £230 million
to more than 517 projects in towns that are formally designated
as English coastal resorts, and of course a great deal more money
has gone into other towns such as Liverpool which are not defined
as resorts but are obviously coastal towns. We do not treat them
differently except in so far as, with our Townscape Heritage Initiative,
we give priority to towns which have distinctive heritage needs
combined with social and economic needs. Because those two are
very frequently found together in coastal towns they have benefited
from our funding to quite a considerable degree, but we do not
treat them differently in any other way.
Q237 Chair: When you are taking decisions
on funding things on heritage grounds, you have just said that
you take into account some factors but how much are you taking
into account the abstract (if I can describe it that way) heritage
value of a particular building or park and the contribution that
facility might make to economic regeneration and tourism?
Ms Cligman: We do both because
we ask the people that apply to us to demonstrate why that heritage
asset is of importance to them and to their local community, and
we ask them to explain how it is significant to them. We do not
define heritage ourselves. We ask the people who apply to us to
define it. We ask them to make the case in terms of the value
of the place to them in heritage terms, and we also ask our applicants
to define the social and economic needs when we are supporting
things within a townscape heritage scheme, which is a programme
which is specifically designed to help historic urban areas. We
ask people to make the case and they have to have a strategy for
dealing with the wider social and economic problems within which
the role of that heritage asset is set. We will not just help
the heritage asset unless there is a clear strategy to maintain
and sustain it for the benefit of the community in the long term.
We ask them to provide that evidence to us.
Q238 Chair: What about English Heritage?
Mr McCallum: We take a similar
line, but obviously, because our remit moves into the planning
world and we spend a lot of time out there discussing planning
applications and things in seaside or coastal towns, I suppose
we think that generally we have a reasonable context for understanding
the decisions and where we give grants. We are also involved in
quite a few regeneration partnerships because of our regional
presence. So often it is the case that we will be sitting on a
town regeneration board, and Margate was mentioned, for example.
We have a place on the Margate Regeneration Board and we make
sure that heritage plays a proper part in the regeneration, so
I suppose we have a wider context in understanding where we think
grants can best be focused.
Q239 Sir Paul Beresford: Anybody
involved in regeneration in this country will know that sooner
or later you bump up against English Heritage. English Heritage
has spent a lot of time looking at and listing things. They do
not de-list things. Do you ever look at some of the projects,
some of the people that come to you, and think, "Hang on
a minute. Should we not actually de-list this building to give
an opportunity for its regeneration which it may not have otherwise?"?
Mr McCallum: I believe we have
just supplied a list of all the buildings that we have de-listed
to the House of Commons Library and it goes to 44 pages, I understand,
so we do de-list things but we do not do it very often. The point
is that if a building is listed it does not rule out either its
demolition or its significant alteration. If a building has been
so altered that it has lost its special interest or we recognise
that it is uneconomic to repair, and the west pier at Brighton
is an example of that, a listed building that we recognise is
simply uneconomic, no scheme will make it viable to repair, but
many other buildings do have some kind of future. I believe that
English Heritage is now looking at regeneration proposals and
rather than saying, "No, you cannot do that. That is affecting
the historic character" it is much more realistic in accepting
change to bring about that vitality because it is not now just
looking at individual buildings and safeguarding them. We are
often looking at the wider area and we are prepared in some cases
to make a compromise on an individual building in order to achieve
a wider regeneration.
| 
