Memorandum submitted by Wiltshire County
Council
DRAFT HERITAGE
PROTECTION BILL
Wiltshire County Council welcomes the opportunity
to comment on the draft Bill. We are aware that detailed commentary
on the implications of the draft Bill for local authorities is
being prepared by organisations such as the Association of Local
Government Archaeological Officers and the Institute of Historic
Building Conservation. We also recognise that the Bill only concerns
itself with the matters that need to be dealt with at the level
of primary legislation and that much of the detail of the reforms
will be stated in new policy documents and guidance to be issued
over the next few months.
We will, therefore, confine our response here
to issues which we feel are more specific to Wiltshire County
Council. Whilst broadly supporting the draft Bill, we have a number
of concerns about how effective implementation can be achieved
and the potential financial impact of the changes on the Council.
SUPPORT FOR
THE BILL
The Council is supportive of the overall aims
and scope of the Bill, recognising the many benefits it will bring
to the historic environment in Wiltshire. In particular, we support
the Bill's aims to provide a more transparent and streamlined
heritage protection system, providing more opportunities for public
involvement and community engagement. The inclusion of the historic
environment and designated archaeological sites in the mainstream
of the planning system will help to encourage the growth of successful
and sustainable communities. We are also broadly supportive of
the new statutory duty on local authorities to develop Historic
Environment Records (HERs) in a manner which is fit for purpose
as a tool in the planning system and provide widespread access
to its data for public use. With Stonehenge and Avebury with our
local authority area, we see the proposal for statutory recognition
of World Heritage Sites as a significant and desirable step forward.
STAFFING, SKILLS
AND CAPACITY
It is apparent from the draft Bill that the
new system cannot be implemented without sufficient resources
and skilled practitioners in local authorities. Wiltshire County
Archaeology Service is a relatively small team operating in a
county with a rich archaeological resource (21,000 sites on the
Sites and Monuments Record and over 2,000 scheduled monuments).
Without additional staffing, appropriate training and funding,
the Service would not have the capacity to deliver the new system
which requires a consent regime based on pre-application discussions
and management agreements.
We understand from statistics provided by colleagues
at English Heritage that there are around 40 scheduled monument
consent applications in Wiltshire each year. There will be a similar
number of new asset consents (HACs) to deal with. However, as
well as the HACs, the Bill outlines a number of other new areas
of associated work. Local authorities will now have to be involved
with the development of Heritage Partnership Agreements for complex
sites. There will be an increase in workload to the Archaeology
Service and Planning Service relating to reviews and appeals against
granting of HAC, and enforcement action for acts in contravention
of HAC. The proposal for certificates of immunity from registration
for archaeological sites is also new and likely to require additional
resourcing.
There is no mention in the Bill or Impact Assessment
of the ongoing management of registered sites and if this role
will be devolved to local authorities along with the consent regime.
This management role is currently done by Field Monument Wardens
within the English Heritage Inspectorate teams. If this is to
be devolved, further funding will be required.
One of the keys risks we have identified for
Wiltshire is that without adequate resourcing for the new scheme,
the preservation of non-designated archaeological sites via the
development control process may suffer as the resources of the
Archaeology Service are spread too thinly. This will result in
irrevocable damage to the County's archaeological resource.
IMPACT ASSESSMENT:
ESTIMATE OF
NEW ADMINISTRATIVE
BURDENS
There is a commitment reiterated in the Assessment
that the DCMS will meet the cost of additional burdens on local
authorities, such as increased responsibilities for HERs. We welcome
this. However, the Assessment also states that it is impossible
to quantify exactly what the impact of the proposed legislative
changes will be on local authorities. It seems to us that a lot
of further work is required to form a better understanding. We
fear that the Impact Assessment really fails to accurately assess
the financial impact of the reforms at local level. In terms of
the commitment from DCMS, we would want to see more detail setting
out how the burdens on each individual local authority are going
to be assessed in relation to the assistance to be offered. For
us the key question is: how will the costs/savings identified
at national level be balanced to achieve real long-term savings
in Wiltshire, as envisaged in the draft Bill?
One of our main concerns is a risk identified
in Annex A of the Impact Assessment that the new system may lead
to a stronger focus for local authorities on statutory requirements,
resulting in a reduction in the resources available for non statutory
work (research, education, community engagement, management of
non designated sites).
OTHER ISSUES
We do have concerns about some of the new concepts
and terminology set out in the draft Bill.
The concept of "special archaeological
interest" for example is proposed to justify registration
of a protected heritage asset instead of the criteria of "national
importance" currently used for scheduled monuments. Further
explanation is needed of how different this will be from national
importance and on how it will mesh with the archaeological provision
within the planning process where national importance is used
to justify the preservation in situ of remains.
We are also concerned that the term "historic
environment" which featured frequently in the White Paper,
does not appear in the draft Bill.
Under the current legislation, certain activities
affecting scheduled monuments are immune from requiring consent
(class consents) and one of these activities is ploughing. The
White Paper brought some hope that this class consent will be
revoked in the new Bill. We eagerly await the further details
and draft consents linked to the new legislation on this in the
hope that the regular ploughing of protected monuments in Wiltshire
can be prevented under the new system.
We will hold back on commenting on these issues
in detail until there is further clarification within the raft
of secondary policy and guidance.
June 2008
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