Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MR PAUL
RAYNES, MR
MIKE BROWN,
MS JAN
WILLS AND
DR ALYSON
COOPER
1 JULY 2008
Chairman: Good morning everybody. This
morning the Committee is holding the first of two sessions in
which we are undertaking pre-legislative scrutiny of the Draft
Heritage Protection Bill. We have four parts to this morning's
hearing, but to start can I welcome Paul Raynes, the Programme
Director of the Local Government Association, Mike Brown, Trustee
of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation, Jan Wills,
County Archaeologist from the Association of Local Government
Archaeological Officers, and Dr Alyson Cooper, the Conservation
Team Leader of Carrick District Council. Thank you for coming.
Can I invite Rosemary McKenna to start?
Q1 Rosemary McKenna: Good morning. What
do you think are the main benefits of the Bill and what are its
drawbacks?
Mr Brown: I think we all welcome
the integration and the unified consent regime. We think it is
going to be a huge improvement and certainly add greatly to the
transparency of the system and the ability of the public to use
the system, and so we welcome that. We certainly welcome the clause
106 requirements, but we feel that as a drawback it is not strong
enough. The IHBC are all of the view that this needs to be rephrased
to make the provision of these services a statutory duty, because
we feel that that is the key that will unlock the necessary resources
that can be directed to front-line services.
Ms Wills: I think ALGAO would
endorse that. We welcome the Bill. We feel that it will enhance
the role of local authorities, particularly our existing role
as advisers on the historic environment in the planning system,
and also our very important role at the moment in managing historic
environment records and, because of the latter, we are very, very
pleased to see in the Bill the proposal that historic environment
records will become the statutory duty of local authorities. Lastly,
we also very much welcome the Government's statement that in the
course of the change in legislation there will be no weakening
of the protection offered to the historic environment, and we
feel that is of the greatest importance.
Dr Cooper: With regard to the
benefits, I fully concur with my other two colleagues. With regard
to drawbacks, our understanding is the objective of the Bill is
to support sustainable communities by putting historic environment
at the heart of an effective planning system at local level. We
are concerned that the remit of our work as Conservation Officers
at the coal face has expanded over the last ten years. In addition
to the work associated with Develop Management we are heavily
involved in Heritage-led regeneration working closely with local
communities and we play an active role in developing policy to
ensure that the historic environment is at the centre of the local
development framework. What we are concerned about is that in
order to address the additional provisions of the draft bill it
will mean that our work will become narrower and less holistic.
Mr Raynes: Maybe just to complete
the set, simplification and greater transparency, bringing the
regimes together is obviously an enormous benefit to the public,
to developers and to people attempting to run the system, and
it creates an opportunity for us, which is precisely to put the
historic environment right at the centre of the planning system.
That is an opportunity at this stage and maybe we will come back
to this later in the discussion, but there is still a number of
questions about the wider planning system and how this is going
to be integrated into it, and we will need to address those as
the Bill goes forward.
Mr Brown: Can I elaborate on that
point? I have to say that there is confusion and a need for clarity
about how the unified system might affect what are presently scheduled
ancient monuments in migrating them into the planning system,
where the presumption is in favour of development unless policies
dictate otherwise. They will lose the current status, as I understand
it, within the (Scheduled Ancient Monuments) Act, where the presumption
is against development, and that may carry the danger of there
being a weakening of controls over them. So I think that needs
further work.
Ms Wills: Following that up, I
think that is a very important point regarding scheduled monuments
and underlines our feeling that there is a need to follow the
draft Bill with a redrafting of the Planning Policy Guidance notes
for the historic environment for archaeology and listed buildings
and conservation areas, because it is in PPG16 that this very
important current presumption in favour of the protection and
preservation of ancient monuments resides. I think unless the
new concepts and the strong protection are carried through into
the planning system, we will not see the benefits of the draft
legislation as is currently envisaged.
Q2 Rosemary McKenna: Given that it
is in draft stage at the moment, what would you like to see changed
or added to the Bill?
Mr Raynes: Regarding that, we
would particularly like to see a timetable for the revision of
PPG15 and 16, and actually it would be quite nice to begin to
see some of the substance of what the new PPG15 and 16 might look
like emerging really quite rapidly. Obviously, the Department
for Communities and Local Government have a lot on their plate
with a new planning bill that is going to require a pretty wholesale
change to the system of planning policy guidance, which is supposed
to migrate into planning policy statements and so on, but as this
Bill goes forward it will be quite difficult to take a rounded
view of the effect of this Bill without seeing what the Department
for Communities and Local Government is planning to do with those
planning policy guidance revisions.
Q3 Rosemary McKenna: Is there a change
in the Bill?
Mr Brown: I think the point should
be taken back to the department's lawyers and ask them to bottom
it out, though I completely concur with the points made that it
is important that proper planning policy guidance is issued as
early as possible in order to aid practitioners in interpreting
the Act.
Ms Wills: I think the points that
have just been made touch on a difficulty we all have, which is
that, although we have a draft Bill, there are many additions
to that draft legislation which are coming forward now. Conservation
areas, for example was issued yesterday. We were also awaiting
various other pieces of statutory guidance. So it is difficult
to take that rounded view of what we would like to see in terms
of change and additions. As an example, one of the fundamental
changes that is proposed in the new legislation is the move, in
the case of archaeology, from the designation of archaeological
sites of national importance to sites which are of special archaeological
interest. That is a new concept. The change is a very significant
one, but at the moment we do not have a definition of "special
archaeological interest", so it is difficult to take a view
on whether that is a positive change or not. I think we would
like to emphasise that there needs to be debate and some robust
discussion as soon as possible about those terms to make sure
that it is a change for the better, that the terms are robust
and are capable of defence and it does not lead to any weakening
of the protection for that part of the historic environment.
Mr Brown: I would have to agree
with that, and I would have to add that I feel that there is a
sense that the Bill is following a timetable that cannot be properly
resourced. I too received the conservation area clauses only yesterday.
Conservation areas are often matters of utmost local significance
and importance to my customers, as I think we are encouraged to
call them these days. I received those yesterday afternoon at
half past five; yet here we are. I would ask the committee to
consider the benefits of asking for proper time for public consultation
on those clauses before we all rush to a judgment. I think there
is a sense that the Bill rather tails off at the end as well.
There is little, if any, mention of local lists, and, again, these
are of enormous importance to local people. We are all local people
in one sense or another, and it is what is important to us as
a community that often exercises people the most, and yet, as
we are all aware, I trust, they (local lists) have next to no
protection under the current regime. Here we are, halfway through
a process with a major Bill in this area, and yet we have no details
at all on how the departments will embrace them and give them
proper protection: certainly the protection that the public rather
expects us to give.
Q4 Chairman: When we took evidence
on our Heritage Review inquiry, we took evidence both from DCMS
and DCLG. A lot of this Bill is actually going to be about DCLG,
and some concern was expressed to us that DCLG does not seem to
feature very much in the Bill and is not a sponsor of the Bill.
You expressed your concern about how ancient monuments were going
to be moved into the planning system and, therefore, really outside
DCMS. Do you worry that DCLG is perhaps not fully brought into
the system as much as DCMS is?
Mr Brown: It has to be a concern,
given the evidence.
Mr Raynes: My sense is that those
within government have heard the points that have been made around
this and that some progress is being made in bringing DCLG within
the conversation, but we would encourage them to make further
progress.
Q5 Chairman: You said you had only
just got the conservation area clauses. Has everybody had a chance
to see those now? No.
Ms Wills: They were issued yesterday,
I believe, so we have only had a very short, rapid summary.
Mr Brown: I read them on the train
here.
Q6 Chairman: Did you utter a squawk
on the train when you came across anything, or were you relatively
content with what you read?
Mr Brown: I would like to withhold
my judgment on that, but, as you have pressed me, there are margin
notes scribbled against virtually every clause, and I think it
needs full investigation. I can understand the intent and the
direction of travel, but I am not too certain that the wording
actually will press the right buttons.
Ms Wills: I think I was pleased
to see, on my equally rapid reading, that it will be possible
to designate conservation areas on archaeological grounds. This
offers up the possibility of an area designation. I am not sure,
again because I have only just seen the document, but it may offer
some possibilities for designation in urban areas, where archaeology
is of considerable importance and where, for example, the provisions
under the 1979 Act for the designation of areas of archaeological
importance will not be continued under the new legislation. So
I think this is an area that we would like to consider in more
detail and comment on in due course.
Q7 Chairman: I think we would say
to all of you that, given that they have only just been published,
should you wish to make further submissions once you have had
a chance to look at them, we would be interested to hear them.
Can we move on to what is possibly the area of greatest concern
that has been expressed about the Bill, which is not the content
of the Bill itself but how it is going to be resourced. The National
Trust told us, "We would rather have no legislation than
a Bill which does not have the means for its effective delivery."
The Government said that their estimate of the net cost of implementation
is £1.72 million. There appears to be a degree of scepticism
as to whether or not that is actually a sufficient figure. What
is your view as to how much this is going to cost?
Mr Raynes: It might be helpful,
Chairman, if I said something to frame this part of the discussion
before we get into numbers. There have been conversations over
recent weeks between the Department, English Heritage, the Local
Government Association and the two professional bodies represented
here, the result of which is that we have all acknowledged that
the numbers in the impact assessment would benefit from further
scrutiny and more work. We have set up, in a very collaborative
and open way, without any resistance on the part of any of the
players, an arrangement whereby we will do that further work,
and it is being done collectively between the departments, the
professional bodies and the LGA. The working group had a meeting
yesterday afternoon, for example, and it is making progress. We
are hoping to report that work back by the end of July, and my
expectation is that it will result in some improvement in the
quality of analysis and, therefore, quite possibly in some revisions
to the figures that are reflected in the assessment that you have
just mentioned.
Mr Brown: I read the impact assessment
with a great deal of scepticism. I come from a building surveying
background, and there they train you to specify what your objective
is but then to quantify what is needed to get actually there so
that you can feed in the necessary resources. I think that the
issue for the whole impact of the Bill is that it has not really
been quantified in an effective way. The impact assessment has
some figures in it which, I have to say, I find rather difficult
to appreciate and understand, but clearly we have an existing
system of conservation controls that is unquantified and it does
seems to me that a great deal of work needs to be done in order
to be able to solve that problem, let alone the issue of the extra
burdens which the Bill will bring onto the various agencies who
are involved.
Mr Raynes: There are a number
of parameters here, Chairman, one of which is that we inevitably
find that the costs of things vary enormously between different
local authorities, and, in particular, if you are looking at this
area, the case load, the nature of work is going to vary enormously
between different places, so it will be necessary to build in
some stress-testing of the impact assessment to work out whether
maybe it is built on some assumptions about places where things
are easy and cheap which do not bear generalising. Secondly, many
of the planning authorities we are talking about are small district
councils. The numbers reflected in the impact assessment, were
you to divide them by 350-odd planning authorities, come out at
such small sums per authority that (a) that looks a bit implausible,
but (b) were the numbers to be significantly wrong, the impact
on an individual local authority really could be quite serious.
Errors of ten or twenty thousand pounds actually do have a significant
impact on capacity and ability to do the job in many planning
authorities, and so it really is necessary to bottom these numbers
out.
Ms Wills: Despite all of those
very legitimate and serious concerns which must be tackled, I
think ALGAO would not concur with the National Trust's view in
these circumstances, in the sense that we are very keen to see
the provisions of the Bill go forward, and some of them relating
to local authorities, for example, in respect of historic environment
records will formalise an existing situation. So, although it
will be very important to make sure that historic environment
records are fit for purpose and deliver the needs of all of the
professionals in the historic environment as well as the wider
community, we do feel that we would be building on an existing
system and, therefore, although there will be costs, we do not
feel that these will be completely out of order. We also feel
that from the local authority perspective, if historic environment
records are a statutory duty, then we will have a better basis
for making the case for resources within our individual local
authorities. We do see that as quite a positive element, albeit
the continuing concern that my colleagues have expressed.
Mr Brown: I think what we can
say with a great deal of certainty, though, is that the current
situation is pretty parlous in that there simply are not the skilled
professionals out there to discharge the current work loads let
alone the added burden that the Bill will bring. There are some
statistics within our written submission from the IHBC, and I
would invite you to consider them. Indeed, we have done a recent
survey on local authority conservation officer provision and,
if the Committee so wished, I could arrange for a copy of that
report to be placed with you.
Q8 Chairman: We are going to come
on to skills very shortly. Before we do, Dr Cooper you are a front-line
practitioner. Are you going to be able to cope in your district
council?
Dr Cooper: Perhaps I can explain.
As part of local government reorganisation within Cornwall, I
have been doing work not only as a team leader within my district
but also looking at the resources across the country, and I think
what is clear is that there is a tremendous difference across
small district councils as to the provisions. Within my district
council I have the equivalent to 2.6 full time equivalent conservation
staff, which is seen as being pretty high, despite the fact that
our work covers a wide remit, as I have mentioned previously.
With local government reorganisation there will be ten conservation
officers, or full-time equivalents, to serve what is now six districts.
Currently, out of those ten full-time equivalents, 55% of their
time is actually spent on development management—so the
system is already creaking. We are all passionately keen about
what we do, but there is a limit, and it is so important with
this legislation and this work, that we do it right. We are also
concerned about the wider picture. We work as teams within the
planning authority, working closely with enforcement officers
and with planning officers, and the impact will not only be on
the conservation officers but it will also be on those wider skills.
It will be vital that enforcement officers are able to carry out
their duties as well. Their resources already are incredibly pushed.
Q9 Chairman: What happens, Paul,
if you come back at the end of your conversations and agree that
actually the cost is going to be much greater than the Government
is projecting?
Mr Raynes: As the Committee will
no doubt have noticed, last December the Government collectively
signed a concordat with the LGA, one provision of which is that
new burdens imposed by government legislation on local government
will be fully funded, and that, to be fair, is a principle that
is absolutely reflected in the wording of the impact assessment,
but clearly the trick is not just to commit to fully funding new
burdens, it is actually to get the numbers right so that the money
is made available. There is a question we have, which again we
will be exploring in further conversations with the Government,
which is exactly what the mechanism for funding the new burden
might be, which is not made explicit in the impact assessment.
It is not entirely clear to me whether there is a proposal here
that the Department and English Heritage should, in perpetuity,
pay a stream of grant allocated to this activity. It is much more
likely, I suspect, that this will be reflected in the overall
local government settlement, which again underlines the fact that
we need to get the numbers right because that overall settlement
then will knock-on into the council tax in a whole series of individual
local authorities where, again, as you may have noticed, one particular
local authority has just been capped for disagreeing with the
Government about two places of rounding on a percentage point
of increase on its council tax. So the pressure on local authorities
is quite acute.
Mr Brown: I think the experience
on the ground is that it is impossible to recruit. I work and
practise in London for one of the London boroughs. I am team leader
of one, so we are trying to run an entire London borough with
myself and one other, and I have been trying for six months to
recruit in order to be able to spend approximately three-quarters
of a million pounds worth of regeneration money targeted in one
of our deprivation wards and yet cannot find any staff in order
to be able to do the work.
Q10 Mr Evans: That is fascinating:
because really what you are saying is that none of you have got
any faith in the figure that has been mentioned, the 1.7 million,
but that through negotiation, irrespective of what that figure
is, you think it will be fully funded but, even if it is fully
funded, you may not be able to recruit the staff to implement
the Bill.
Mr Brown: Welcome to our world.
Q11 Mr Evans: As long as we know
where we are.
Mr Raynes: There is an issue there,
obviously, about the scope of the question the Committee is asking.
We are here to talk about the Bill and the impact of the Bill,
and we are engaged in what look like very optimistic conversations
with the Government about the costs that are associated with the
Bill. It would, of course, be possible to get into wider conversations
on which the professional bodies, undoubtedly, will have very
strong views about the resourcing of particular professions.
Q12 Alan Keen: We are talking about
costs, obviously, and local authority representatives always have
a punished look on their face when they come before us, and I
sympathise. Are there direct links between the costs that you
incur, because there are benefits from tourism and attractions
to London and other places? Are the costs linked with cost benefits
or are you just isolated and there are no direct links?
Dr Cooper: May I come in there?
Can I ask whether that is with work generally? Within the work
I do with 2.8 or 2.6 staff, over the last seven years, by using
£200,000 of district council money, I have bid for, managed
and financially managed two heritage initiative grant schemes.
That £200,000 has brought in £4.2 million worth of investment
in the historic environment, it has generated 70 direct jobs,
it has provided 70 full-time temporary jobs for work within the
construction trade and has generated nearly three million pounds
worth of sales.
Q13 Alan Keen: Yes, that was my guess.
Is that always the case across the grain? There must be some cases
where it is not costs, it is a duty to preserve but it does not
have any benefits of income?
Ms Wills: The vast majority of
the work we do is, at its heart, about protecting, understanding,
recording the resource that is the historic environment, whether
that is archaeological sites, historic buildings or the general
historic character of the rural and urban environment. So that
is at its core. Sometimes people do not actually see the link
between that and what one might call the exploitation of that
resource. So people go to visit sites, income is generated, people
are employed; there is a very, very real element, a strong element,
of income generation which results from the work that we do. Sometimes
the links are close and obvious, and you have demonstrated those
well; sometimes they are much more tenuous, because, obviously,
if the historic environment, the archaeological sites, the historic
buildings are not there, they are not there to provide the basis
for economic development or to act as the focus for tourist attractions,
visitors, et cetera.
Q14 Alan Keen: I guess there were
not always links. I can understand that Cornwall, because it is
a tourist area, gets great benefit from what you and your staff
do, but some London boroughs, for instance, have little in the
way of heritage—I do not mean to insult them—and others
are very rich. The costs should not fall on individual councils,
I would not have thought. Is this something which you feel yourselves,
or am I completely wrong?
Ms Wills: I think one of the distinguishing
features of the historic environment is that it is everywhere.
You could say that all local authorities will have some element
of their heritage, historic environment, which needs protection,
conservation, which may act as the focus for regeneration. A good
example outside of what is an obvious tourist area would be work,
for example, that I am currently engaged on in Gloucester, which
in many ways is quite a deprived urban area but where heritage
is one of the stimuli, one of the focuses of the current programme
of regeneration, spearheaded by the Gloucester Heritage Urban
Regeneration Company, and I think there is a very real recognition
there of the importance that the historic environment can play
in stimulating not only interest in tourists and visitors but
being used to enhance people's sense of place, the understanding
by the community of where they live, enhancing community cohesion,
and so on. I think it has a very, very widespread application,
much wider than tourism.
Mr Brown: It is very much the
pleasure in the job now. Twenty years ago conservation was focused
on building techniques, lime and timbers and things like that,
but in the last ten years or so it really has moved on. It seems
to me the case is very much proven that investment in the historic
built environment rapidly transmits itself into major wins about
sustaining communities, creating jobs, making places much more
pleasant to live in and for people to invest their businesses
into, and it seems to me that the areas that have been able to
focus on that are the ones that have weathered the various economic
storms the best.
Q15 Alan Keen: Yes, that is why I
raised the point, but I am looking at costs. Education owes you
an awful lot, or there is a lot to gain which maybe is not being
exploited in every area. Are there enough links across counties
and boroughs and district councils or is it fractured?
Mr Raynes: I rather think this
takes us back to the discussion earlier on about the place of
the historic environment in the wider planning process. What we
would very much hope the Bill helps to continue with, because
it is a trend that, as Mike says, has been going on for some time,
is the way in which the historic environment has its proper place
at the top table, as it were, through the holistic local development
framework in a particular place, its sustainable community strategy,
and so on. There are a legion examples of places that are doing
this. They are taking a long-term view of their future and defining
it with their historic environment as one of the major determinants
of their identity and their attraction to incomers, and tourists,
and businesses, and so on.
Q16 Alan Keen: It is our job to help
you.
Mr Brown: Indeed.
Q17 Alan Keen: We have got a special
interest. This committee cares about heritage.
Mr Brown: I feel that whatever
the net cost turns out to be, I would invite you to see it not
as a cost but as an investment in local communities.
Q18 Alan Keen: We understand that,
but we want to produce a report which reflects the concern that
you have got. I am not looking at you as costs. I am saying: is
that how other people look at you, and they should not, and what
would you like us to say that is going to help?
Ms Wills: I think, in a way, this
comes back to a point we were discussing earlier about the need
to ensure that other government departments are fully engaged
in his process, not only DCLG but also Defra, because the historic
environment is truly a cross-cutting issue and I think we need
to ensure that its relevance and its benefits are fully recognised
across local and national government and, as you just said, Mike,
that the money invested truly is an investment that can deliver
wide benefits for other departments locally and nationally.
Q19 Mr Sanders: Going back to the
Bill and the reform that the Bill proposes, do you think local
authorities have enough staff with the right skills and expertise
to cope with it?
Mr Brown: In our written submission
we have provided some evidence of the fact that there is a surprising
percentage of local authorities that have no in-house professional
advisors, and, indeed, there is a minority—I think it is
2%—who take no advice at all on the historic built environment
when making planning decisions. I am very pleased that the Act
is going to address this. To reiterate my earlier points, I do
feel that this should be made a statutory duty to ensure that
it is properly implemented. I am concerned that there are other
clauses beyond 106 that rather fudge the issue and perhaps invite
local authorities to try and relocate that burden on local and
national amenity societies. I think that is very much a point
that needs to be addressed. I have made the case anecdotally about
the near impossibility of recruiting at the moment; it is a profession
that has been allowed to decline. There is some evidence about
the age profile of the profession, indicating that there is going
to be a hole of 30 and 40-year- olds not able to step in in ten
years' time when people like my generation, perhaps, are approaching
retirement. So there are long-term trends that need to be addressed,
and they will clearly need, therefore, to consider the career
structures, the job security and the pay that is on offer to people
in this profession.
Ms Wills: In the draft Bill there
is, as you mention, Mike, a requirement that local authorities
take expert advice in determining development proposals, applications,
affecting the historic environment. I think we would like to see
more detail about that, more detailed guidance, to ensure that
local authorities really do have the expert staff to come to an
informed judgment about applications.
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