Memorandum submitted by Rochester Cathedral
HERITAGE PARTNERSHIP
AGREEMENTS
Rochester Cathedral participated in a pilot
project to develop a Heritage Partnership Agreement covering the
cathedral and precincts, between 2005 and 2007.
HPAs are a development I want to support, based
on our experience of the pilot. Its benefits have been as follows:
1.The process of developing and reviewing the
HPA gets all the important partners around the table from the
start. This relational approach has been a vital ingredient in
allowing us to address potentially difficult issues with a more
constructive and less defensive attitude. It has built trust,
which has often been the missing ingredient where heritage protection
has been concerned. The current systems tends to pit regulators
against the regulated, which is naturally confrontational. The
new system is far more constructive.
2.No-one enjoys the frustrations of having the
secular and ecclesiastical systems overlapping (so-called "dual
control"), and anything that simplifies the necessary permissions
and approvals processes—without weakening protective mechanisms—is
to be welcomed.
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