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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 821-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE
DRAFT HERITAGE PROTECTION BILL
Wednesday 2 July 2008 RT HON MARGARET HODGE MP and DR SIMON THURLEY Evidence heard in Public Questions 58 - 102
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Wednesday 2 July 2008 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the Chair Janet Anderson Philip Davies Mr Nigel Evans Rosemary McKenna Helen Southworth ________________ Memorandum submitted by English Heritage
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport; and Dr Simon Thurley, Chief Executive, English Heritage, gave evidence.
Chairman: Good afternoon everybody. This is the second session of the Committee's examination of the Heritage Protection Bill. We are delighted to welcome this afternoon the Minister, Margaret Hodge, and the Chief Executive of English Heritage, Dr Simon Thurley. Before I begin, Helen Southworth would like to make a brief statement. Helen Southworth: If I could remind people that my husband is the Head of the Museum Service for Lancashire County Council. Mr Evans: And a jolly good job he does too! Q58 Chairman: So if I could begin, Minister, this Bill, which has been largely welcomed by the heritage sector, first began to be discussed in July 2003. We are now three years later and we obviously welcome very much the fact that this Committee has the opportunity to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny, but we have received a number of criticisms that it is difficult to undertake that when there are still parts of the Bill which have not been published. Can you say why it is that after three years there are still bits of the Bill which have not yet come out in their final form? Is there going to be an opportunity for the sector to be consulted on those parts that we are still awaiting? Margaret Hodge: We could always have done better, but you are considering a draft version of the Bill, and therefore we are working towards getting all the clauses actually written in time, hopefully, for the next session of Parliament. You will know that Parliamentary Counsel only gets engaged when it is pretty clear that you will get a slot in the legislation, so what we did was draft those clauses which implied some policy change or were more important first so that in your consideration of the Bill you could see those. The ones that still need to be drafted are on the whole those where we are just transferring existing legislation into the new legislation. On the whole policy has been determined, but you never quite know in these last few months what might emerge, and we will consult. To be fair, it is only really the wording and clearly we will try and consult as best we can. I know the conservation area clauses are the ones that are causing particular concern. We have now published those and we will consult on the draft clauses. It is not quite as long a period of consultation as we would have liked. Instead of the usual three months it will probably be six or eight weeks. Policy has been decided. There are one or two other little bits such as the receiver of wreck duties where there are new duties on him or her to collect data, where there have been some problems over devolution issues so we have had to sort that out before we could give it to Parliamentary Counsel to draft, but there will be full consultation, and I think the key clauses are already out there. I suppose the last thing I would say is that we have already started publishing draft guidance so there we are ahead of the game. We have done that around the ecclesiastical issues and the heritage environmental records, which are two new areas, and again that is in an attempt to be as consultative and as open as we can be. Q59 Chairman: So when do you think we are going to see the full Bill? Margaret Hodge: I hope for next session. Q60 Chairman: But in advance of the next session, will the rest of the Bill be published over the course of the next few weeks? Margaret Hodge: It really depends on Parliamentary Counsel. I have had this before, you think you have got your policy ready but as Parliamentary Counsel are always overworked you cannot engage them in the actual drafting of clauses until you are pretty close up to the wire, so they are now engaged. On the conservation area clauses we have got to get it to them by September. It is in a fit state, I do not think there are problems with it, and I am confident we will have it ready for the next session of Parliament. Q61 Helen Southworth: There has been a lot of positive response to the Bill and the concepts behind the Bill, but one of the serious concerns that is being expressed is around the relationship with Communities and Local Government and the importance of having Communities and Local Government completely engaged with the Bill in order to achieve the outcomes. Can you explain to us why they are not co-sponsors and why they are not actively participating in this process? Margaret Hodge: They are actively participating. They are not co-sponsors because it is a heritage bill and therefore we have taken the lead on it, although I will have a CLG minister sitting with me when we discuss the clauses of the Bill in committee so that we can show ourselves to be joined up in that way. Planning is absolutely vital as a tool for ensuring that we provide proper protection to our heritage assets. The two go hand-in-hand and it is the planning tools which enable you not just to protect the asset itself but protect the environment around the asset, so they are absolutely key. We also think from the planners' point of view that heritage is hugely important in what we today call the place-making agenda. There are endless examples. I always use the example of the very first adjournment debate I did with this particular set of ministerial responsibilities which was around an Iron Age fort in Berwick in Elmet. It is awful but I cannot remember who the MP was but nevertheless what was really interesting --- Chairman: Alan Beith? Q62 Philip Davies: No, it is not that one. It is in West Yorkshire. Margaret Hodge: The interesting thing was that for this Iron Age fort in this small village getting the archaeological digs right and protecting the heritage was absolutely central to creating a sense of place, a sense of belonging, a sense of community, and a sense of the cohesion in the village. It is absolutely central to what we are doing and we are working closely with them. There are a lot of features and clauses in the Bill where we reflect that integrated approach. We are doing about, for example, merging conservation area consent with planning permission, I think demonstrates the inter-linking and the imperative of the two working together. The new duty to ensure that local authorities keep heritage records is another way of trying to bring heritage into the mainstream of planning. I am feeling pretty confident about that. The other thing to say to you is I think DCLG are equally engaged. I have talked to Baroness Andrews a lot about these issues. She recently gave a speech in which she talked about her commitment to revise the two planning circulars that we need to ensure are updated. They are currently doing two bits of consultation around World Heritage Sites to see how planning could be incorporated into World Heritage Site sponsorship and improvement. They are also doing one around consents for World Heritage. We are as one. They just are not co-sponsoring it because we think it is ours, but we want to work with them. Q63 Helen Southworth: Are we going to look forward to having some more direct evidence of Community and Local Government involvement? There is a very strong body of opinion that says they need to take some fairly urgent action in terms of reviewing, for example, Planning Policy Statements 15 and 16. Margaret Hodge: Simon may want to add to this. English Heritage, DCMS and DCLG are working together on revising both those pieces of guidance, PPG15 and PPG16. I think you have been working quite closely with them, have you not? Dr Thurley: English Heritage feels, together with most of the people I think you have taken evidence from, that the revision of PPG15 and 16 is absolutely fundamental to this; you cannot have the new Bill without that. Baroness Andrews has recently given a commitment that that is going to go ahead, as far as I understand it, at a speech that she gave recently. Q64 Helen Southworth: Do we have a timetable for that? Dr Thurley: You would have to ask the Government that but what I can say is --- Margaret Hodge: They are going to publish the drafts of those, they have said, before Christmas. Dr Thurley: English Heritage is committed and is already working with DCMS to try and get a draft of that together. In fact the statutory English Heritage committee this very morning considered a paper which would feed into that paper. Work is actively underway on that and I think that it is extremely important that the Government keeps the pace up to retain confidence in the sector that this new planning guidance will come out on the same time-frame as the Bill, otherwise I think there would be a lack of confidence in it. Q65 Helen Southworth: Particularly in regard to the need to disseminate the guidance across a very wide area and amongst a very disparate group of people in order to ensure that it is effective. Margaret Hodge: This is clearly a key component of ensuring that we get the Bill working in practice. I have had several conversations with Kay Andrews who is the Minister I deal with on these issues. She is signed up to it. My understanding is that English Heritage, our officials and CLG officials are working closely together and she has given this commitment that the draft will be out before Christmas. I would have thought given the time-frame we are not likely really to get introduction until probably the New Year. The Queen's Speech is quite late this year. I do not know. Q66 Helen Southworth: If we are talking of the draft before Christmas when are we talking of the actual planning guidance being a requirement on authorities? Margaret Hodge: Assuming we get legislative time next session, it will not be enacted until July, September, whenever, and then there is a little bit of time that is taken. English Heritage already has the money for training and they will be doing the training of local authority officials so that they know how to work within the context of the new Bill/Act. I think we are probably talking about 2010 for implementation. If we get the draft planning guidance out by Christmas that is in plenty of time to get everything ready. Q67 Helen Southworth: So the intention is to have the Bill and the planning guidance going live simultaneously? Margaret Hodge: Yes. Q68 Chairman: So your expectation is that Bill is going to be later on in the next session? Margaret Hodge: To be honest, I do not know, it depends on Government priorities. Those sorts of discussions have not taken place yet. Q69 Chairman: I merely leave with you that the evidence we received yesterday was absolutely clear that the planning policy guidance is fundamental to this and therefore it is difficult to consider the Bill without it, so if you could make that point to your DCLG colleague I think it will be appreciated. Margaret Hodge: Indeed. Q70 Rosemary McKenna: There have been some expressions of concern about the resourcing of the Bill. We understand that the predicted net cost of implementing the Bill of £1.72 million is already under review. Do you expect the figure to rise considerably? Margaret Hodge: On the whole, we think that it is a pretty cost-neutral Bill because it is a Bill which has a lot of streamlining of processes in it. For example, at the moment we have this rather cumbersome system where a request to list a particular building goes first to English Heritage for consideration and then comes to the Department. English Heritage will have full responsibility for that. We are merging things like the conservation area consents and planning permission. There are quite a lot of ways in which we think there will be savings in the Bill. However, we have taken the best methodology we can to get to the costings that you have in the impact assessment. We will keep them constantly under review to ensure that they work. We have funded English Heritage through this Comprehensive Spending Review period to deal with a lot of the set-up costs, but we recognise that there will probably be additional costs falling to them which will have to form part of the consideration for the next Spending Review. On local authorities we have guaranteed that if there are new duties which create a funding pressure, they will be met. At present it is a bit swings and roundabouts for local authorities because they have savings in the proposals as well as new duties but we will keep it under review. The final thing to say to you, Rosemary, is that we will also consult. We are not doing this as DCMS working on its own; we are working with the Local Government Association and we are working with English Heritage and other partners, so we are trying to be as open and as transparent as we can on any costs that could be incurred. Q71 Rosemary McKenna: So you are quite confident then that the local authorities should not be too concerned about the proposals if they raise real concerns on funding? Margaret Hodge: Local authorities will always say they need more money and local authorities will always say that they are not funded sufficiently to carry on their duties, but you could turn round and say their funding settlement over this Spending Review period has been above inflation, so they have not done badly. We have also taken away the ring-fencing of about £5 billion-worth of expenditure for local authorities, so that gives them much more discretion as to how they do it. So far we think a fair additional cost to local authorities out of the proposals is about £400,000, and we have put that in, but they will save £500,000 simply by the merging of the two consents, the conservation area consent and the planning permission consent, and we will keep it under review. Let me just give you one fact which is interesting because there will be new duties on local authorities, there will be new assets which will be eligible for being considered as heritage assets, but actually if you put all those new assets together they will only represent about 0.5% of the total heritage asset base, so it is not a massive increase, and the purpose behind many of the propositions was to enhance heritage within our communities but also streamline present procedures, and that is money-saving. Q72 Rosemary McKenna: Thank you. On to something quite different, the National Trust have told us that they would "rather have no legislation than a Bill which does not have the means for its effective delivery". Do you think that is an overreaction? Margaret Hodge: I did not know they had said that. In the discussions I have had most people have welcomed it for all sorts of features that it has got: the single unified system is better; we can have much better consultation processes; we are bringing many more assets together. It is the first modernisation for goodness knows how long, half a century or something, of the way in which we protect and promote our heritage environment. I hope the National Trust supports that. I am pretty confident, because of the open and consultative way in which we have drawn up the Bill and the fact that you are having this consideration of it here in the Select Committee, that we are going ahead with something which we think is affordable. There will always be people who say, "We need more money," and always people who say, "We have not got enough professionals working in this part of the system or that part of the system," but we do not do badly now and I think under the new regime we will serve Britain better in terms of its heritage assets. Q73 Chairman: You said we do not do badly now. Let me put to you one submission we have from the Country Land and Business Association who say that whilst they welcome the Bill in general terms "... it is not the answer to the current crisis in the heritage protection system". They say that there are few things more valuable to heritage than a really good conservation officer. We know that in large numbers of local authorities there are no conservation officers. Even where there are, they go on to say, they are usually overworked, often demotivated because conservation has low status in most local planning authorities, and they get little time. This leads to unnecessary costs and delays and diverts spending from maintenance. It discourages people from owning heritage at all. There is a perception that the system is unreasonable and inconsistent. Buildings are decaying and losing value because their owners think they cannot get consent. They conclude that what it really needs is perhaps £50 million to £100 million extra devoted to heritage by local authorities. The £1.27 million, which is the predicated cost of this Bill, which you are saying will be met, is clearly going to be nothing like sufficient to meet that. Margaret Hodge: Let us just say that at present local authorities appear to be coping pretty well with 32,000 applications each year for listed building consent (under the old terminology). I have looked at the figures of officials in local government and on the conservation side between 2002 and 2006, which is the period I looked at, there have been 84 more building conservation staff in local authorities. If you look at the archaeology side of it, there has been a 5% increase in the number of staff employed. Again, we are back to this of course we could do with more money and of course we could improve the speed at which we have consideration of applications, but I do not think we are doing badly. Again, Simon can say a bit more about the age profile of the people but it is not a bad age profile. It is not as bad as other professional sectors that I have to deal with. It looks as if we will be all right for 20 years on the age profile that we have got. There is a job to be done to encourage every local authority to really value its heritage. We have got some excellent local authorities and we have got some less effective local authorities and that is part of the devolution of power. One of the mechanisms that we have tried to employ to encourage more local authority commitment to this is to have a member in each local authority who is called the "historic environment champion". We have got to the point now where 70% of local authorities enjoy those people. Again, that is trying to lift it up. Both English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund put money into training. English Heritage have a professional placement scheme and the Heritage Lottery Fund have a bursary scheme. I do not think we are doing badly. Interestingly enough, Chairman, where I do think we could do with much more money is investment in the heritage assets themselves. There we are always running to keep still to try and maintain the structures of our invaluable heritage assets. Q74 Chairman: You say that the age profile is not too bad but we have received direct evidence from both the Local Government Association and the Institute of Historic Building Conservation that due to a skewed age profile a large number of conservation officers are due to retire in the next five years. Meanwhile the stream of new officers is drying up with undergraduate courses at the Universities of Derby, Huddersfield, Northumbria, Glamorgan and Preston all having recently been discontinued. Yesterday we heard from the IHBC who said to us: "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." You do not agree with that? Margaret Hodge: I do not. Can I ask Simon because English Heritage have done some work around these figures. Dr Thurley: I can either answer now in detail or later in writing about the age profile of conservation officers. Of course the IHBC do not have a total monopoly on all conservation officers. Not all of them are actually members of it. I think if you look at the figures, it does not look as if there is going to be a great exodus in the next few years. I think there is a slightly wider point, and perhaps it is a more strategic point to make about it, which is I think the CLBA are right to be concerned because there are problems and I do not think anyone is pretending that the Bill is going to answer all the problems. The Bill is one of what I would describe as three things that need to happen in order to deal with the problems that the CLBA and others are highlighting. The Bill is one; training is the second and the Minister has already said that the Government has been keen to support our training efforts and I could give you quite a lot of information about what that is; and the third thing is dealing with some of the philosophical issues around conservation, trying to combat the old idea that conservation is about stopping change, about stopping things from happening, and trying to help, particularly people who have that particular approach, to adopt an approach that says this is about managing change and about trying to find good solutions which are going to be beneficial to society. My answer to your question would be that the Bill is part of a three-legged stool. You take any one of those away, you take the training away, it does not work; if you take the efforts to get people to think differently about conservation away, it does not work; and you if you take away the improvements which the Bill offers, it does not work. With all three together I think that the CLBA and others will find that those problems are being tackled in a really quite effective and strategic way. Q75 Helen Southworth: Could I ask you following what you have just said about the role of DCMS as the champion of heritage, the Bill is providing a very significant opportunity for building on that role. Could you describe to us what you are going to be doing in terms of roadshows around the country, profiling, and working with DCLG for example to demonstrate good practice using heritage as a driver of regeneration? What are we going to see over the next 18 months to get the profile up and to get people enthusiastic to use this change opportunity? Margaret Hodge: One of the things I have tried to do since I have had this job is to strengthen the links between culture and heritage and regional development agencies and the local authorities because I think probably we have not punched up to our legitimate weight in all sorts of ways - the importance of heritage in place-making, the importance of heritage for tourism, and the importance of creativity and culture and the creative industries in regional and local economies - and I think there is a big job to be done to work on those authorities that do not get it, building on the excellent practices of those that do. Interestingly enough, I am going from giving evidence this afternoon to a meeting with all the RDA chairmen just to talk there about how we can strengthen the links in recognising place-making and those sorts of issues. We are trying to get local authorities in their local area agreements to push this up as one of the issues on which they want to be measured. Indeed, one of things we have announced today is we are not going to use the regional culture consortia as a mechanism for trying to impact on both local authorities and regional development agencies, but we are going to task English Heritage and our other big NDPBs - the Arts Council, Sport England and the MLA - to work together to get a much better hold of all our agendas in all the regional strategies and in the local area agreements. There is a task to be done. Have I got a programme for roadshows? To be honest, not yet, but it is a good idea and I will take that away and I will think about it. Q76 Chairman: Just before I move on, this is a resourcing question: we understood yesterday that there are discussions taking place between the LGA, English Heritage and DCMS to revise the estimate about the cost to local authorities of implementing the measures in the Bill. Can you give us an undertaking that whatever figure emerges from that discussion that is the figure which will be funded by the Government to local authorities? Margaret Hodge: Yes. Q77 Chairman: And will it be ring-fenced or will it just be part of local government funding? Margaret Hodge: No, we will not ring-fence because we leave discretion to local government now as to how they choose to spend it. I think local government would be furious if we attempted to ring-fence those resources. Q78 Chairman: So there must be a real danger that it will just disappear into the local government pot and actually heritage will not see the benefit of this? Margaret Hodge: There is always that danger if you do not ring-fence money but you have to balance that against the discretion of local authorities to respond to different priorities as they see them within their local communities. That also has to be balanced against the fact that they will have new duties in the Bill and they will have to fulfil those duties, so a mixture of persuasion, showing good example, and a regulatory framework as proposed in the Bill I think probably is a better way forward than trying to ring-fence money. Q79 Philip Davies: There are an estimated 37,000 listed buildings at risk in England and there is already statutory action that can be taken to prevent demolition of buildings without consent or unauthorised work. I was just wondering, rather than adding more duties and regulation and rules, whether any review had taken place of whether the existing regulations that were there were being properly implemented and enforced at the moment? Margaret Hodge: Part of the purpose of the Bill is to streamline procedures. I have mentioned a couple of examples of that already, the fact that we are not going to have this duplication of effort by English Heritage in considering whether or not a building should go on the register and then DCMS considering that. We are also merging the conservation area consent - and I think it is going to be quite a big change - and procedures for planning to put planning at the heart of conservation, so we have, we believe, undertaken in the preparation of this Bill an exercise which cuts out unnecessary duplication. If the Committee have other ideas which we should consider that is entirely within the purposes of this pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill. Beyond that I am quite satisfied that we do exercise the enforcement powers pretty well at present. In an odd way there is a negative to prove that in that there are no judicial reviews, as I can see at present, of most of the actions we take, and where we do have enforcement action, it tends to be on listed buildings where perhaps a developer has done something without proper permissions or against conserving the special interest of particular buildings. The third thing I would say to you in response to that is that there are plenty of powers there. What you need to get is what Simon talked about which is local authorities signed up to it, to get the will to make this a priority within the authorities. You need to deal with a fear that could emerge in the Bill that they might be involved in compensation claims if they get it wrong. You just need to help them through training to get on with it. I suppose the very final thing I would want to say to you is that enforcement ought to be the very last tool we employ. What I hope we will get out of the new culture that emerges, particularly in local authorities in the context of the Bill, will be much greater support for those who have responsibility for heritage assets so that through support they can conserve them and look after them properly rather than us or any of the public agencies having to take action through enforcement. Q80 Philip Davies: I am quite happy to bring Simon in because I think the feeling seems to be that enforcement very rarely takes place when things go wrong. It is no good having anything in place if it is not going to be enforced. I wondered whether the Bill was perhaps slightly lacking on the enforcement side of things? Dr Thurley: Our view is the same as the Government's on this which is that the powers are all there; the difficulty is persuading those who have the powers to use them. The fear very often is, particularly with the powers that local authorities have (which are actually quite extensive) that they will exercise those powers and then be left with the responsibility for dealing with a building which has huge liabilities attached to it. One of the things that English Heritage is exploring is whether on those occasions where there is a real need for enforcement and where a local authority is very anxious about doing it because of the financial liabilities, in some way, whether we can underwrite that to try and make it less frightening, if you like, for a local authority to take action. I think the issue is not about new powers; it is about helping local authorities to have the confidence to use those powers, and I do see that certainly in the cases of Grade I and II* listed buildings that is a role for English Heritage; it is a role for the national agency. Q81 Philip Davies: In that sense it seems to me that makes a mockery of the projected cost of £1.72 million of the Bill because if the Bill is actually to mean anything, and it is going to be properly enforced, and the thing that you have described is required for it to be properly enforced, ie some underwritten cost to help local authorities persuade them to take the action, £1.72 million is neither here nor there. That seems to me like a massive potential cost for one body or another. Dr Thurley: Of course the enforcement issue is a planning issue and it is not a heritage protection issue. By the time enforcement takes place it is part of the planning system that needs to be operated. I do not think the intention was - and it is not my purpose to speak for the Government - that that cost should be swept up in the Bill. This is really for budgets elsewhere to be considered. It is not part of the heritage protection legislation. Margaret Hodge: Can I just come back. On the whole the enforcement powers are being replicated in this Bill. There are some new assets which will come into the register but the actual powers are the same as they are now. On the whole we think this Bill actually will save money because of the changes we are making in streamlining procedures, so I think the assertion that because it is a new bill of legislation that inevitably will require new resources for enforcement is slightly misplaced. I think we are hoping that the Bill will help people work smarter. Let me take another example - Heritage Protection Agreements - if we get those off the ground that is a way in which we can work in partnership and save money. I think you had evidence yesterday from UEA, I understand, who have used that as a mechanism effectively. You work in partnership, you save money and enforcement becomes less necessary. If we can get more of that sort of approach and more of that sort of culture going in the system, enforcement should not be the one that costs a lot of money. Q82 Janet Anderson: I just wanted to ask you something about where the onus was to step in when serious neglect is involved. I understand that in maintaining an historic building the onus is currently on the local authority to step in when serious neglect has occurred, not on the owner. Will that change under this Bill? Dr Thurley: The onus remains on the local authority although there are powers in extremis for English Heritage or the Secretary of State to step in. English Heritage would require the consent of the Secretary of State to do that. There are new powers but I do not think that either the Secretary of State or English Heritage intends them to be powers that are regularly used. Q83 Janet Anderson: It is just I have a case in my own constituency of someone who has a listed barn next to her home. She cannot afford to repair it, she simply does not have the means to repair it, so in fact at the moment the onus will be on the local authority, and that will stay the same? Dr Thurley: The onus is on the owner to repair their barn. It would be on the local authority if the barn gets into a dilapidated and dangerous state and risks the integrity of the heritage structure. Q84 Janet Anderson: And she cannot afford to repair it herself. Dr Thurley: There are grants available from both local authorities and from national government but they are pretty heavily circumscribed. Chairman: I think we will suspend for ten minutes whilst we go and vote. The Committee suspended from 3.01 pm to 3.12 pm for a division in the House. Chairman: We seem to have dropped two who may or may not re-emerge but I think we will resume in which case can I invite Nigel Evans to ask the next question. Q85 Mr Evans: Minister, Peter Hinton, who is Chief Executive of the Institute of Field Archaeologists, who I am sure you know, said to us yesterday that in nearly all other European countries there is a system of archaeological licensing which we do not have in England and Wales or Scotland and basically he thought that would be a good idea. The main thrust of it was that it would prevent some of the cowboys coming in or other people coming in and undercutting what proper professional archaeologists would do and therefore help to ensure the maintenance and preservation of our heritage sites. What do you think about that? Margaret Hodge: I know the archaeologists want to insert some sort of provision in the Bill to ensure that only accredited archaeologists can fulfil some of the new duties that will be put upon them. I do not think it is the place of this Bill to do that. Our understanding, and we touched on this earlier on in the evidence I gave, is that there is not a current shortage, there is not a market failure, so we are not convinced that we ought to intervene at this point. The third thing I would say is I do not think anywhere in the planning system is there an accreditation regime which constrains those who would be eligible to fulfil the tasks and functions of that particular regime, and I would be hugely reluctant in what is supposed to be a deregulatory measure to try and introduce regulations around the accreditation of a particular group of professionals. Q86 Mr Evans: They have not made their case sufficiently strongly enough for you so they had better have more representations to you? Is that what you are saying? Margaret Hodge: They can always have representations, my door is always open, but I am certainly not convinced. Q87 Mr Evans: Dr Thurley, can I ask you about Heritage Partnership Agreement pilot schemes. There were supposed to be 24 but only nine were completed. How come only nine? Dr Thurley: Of course they were pilots and the point about a pilot is that you are doing something that is experimental and that in fact has never been done before so. We had quite a wide range of pilots and as some of them started it became apparent quite quickly that they either were not going to work or they were not going to be saving any time or money. We ended up focusing on the nine core ones which were working, and in fact in the end we focused them down even further on to a relatively small number which we spent a lot of time analysing very carefully, as you probably know Cornish Bridges being one of the most important of those, in order to really extract the maximum amount of detail and benefit out of it. As a result of that, we have now commissioned a whole series of new pilots and we will probably pursue most of them because we have learnt so much from the other ones. In a way it is a sign of strength of the process that we said that is not working, let us get rid of it and focus on the ones that are really going to tell us something worth knowing. Q88 Mr Evans: How many new pilots have you asked to be set up? Dr Thurley: About two dozen. Q89 Mr Evans: So the Cornish project was the one that you looked very seriously at and as far as costs and savings are concerned, the other 24 projects now are going to be looked at very seriously to ensure that the Cornish project is basically something that can give us lessons about the proper costs and savings? Dr Thurley: Yes, I think so, and as I think you heard yesterday from the UEA, an investment of £70,000 delivered £250,000 worth of savings for them. I would not imagine that the Cornish Bridges were a fluke lucky savings pilot. I think that many of the other pilots, certainly the one with London Underground, we know generated significant savings. There are all sorts of other minor but significant gremlins in the system which we want to work through with these pilots because the aim really is to have the system in a really good condition when the Bill is passed, when it becomes law, so that we can get up and go and say we have done these, we know what the problems are, and we can put the whole lot into action as quickly as possible. Q90 Mr Evans: You are right that the University of East Anglia was very pleased with the regime and the savings that it made whereas Westminster City Council had more concerns about the number of HPAs that might come through and the impact that would have on them. Do you share their concerns at all? Dr Thurley: I was not here yesterday but I did receive a report and I was very disappointed with the evidence that Westminster gave because certainly what we know is that the pilot that they were principally referring to, which is the Piccadilly Line pilot, was hugely welcomed by London Underground themselves. It saved them a huge amount of work so I think we might want to go back and have a conversation with our colleagues in Westminster. Q91 Mr Evans: I just think it is the number because they were looking at the estate that they look after and, as you can imagine, there are a lot of historic sites that are involved there and I think it is the number that they were concerned about. Indeed, they wanted the ability to say, "No, we will not have an HPA because we just do not think it is worthwhile." Do you think they ought to be given that power? Dr Thurley: The important thing about Heritage Partnership Agreements is that they are only really useful where you are dealing with large estates where you have a single owner with multiple buildings. Westminster, I think I am right in saying, has the highest number of listed buildings of any borough in England and so I can understand that there might be some concern there but it does not have lots of estates of the sort of nature that we are thinking of. A very, very obvious example is we would very much like to have a Heritage Partnership Agreement with the National Trust who have a very large estate, they have 375 sites across the country, almost all of them I should think are listed, a because a Heritage Partnership Agreement will reduce the amount of work we do, the Trust does and the local authorities do. Q92 Mr Evans: During the pilots that you had were you happy that they were properly resourced or did you find some difficulties with that? Dr Thurley: The aim in future will be to try and get the applicant who wants to have a Heritage Partnership Agreement to do a lot of the work themselves. They will obviously need advice and guidance and one of the things that we will be doing, and coming out of the pilots, will be producing guidance for owners to do that. A lot of the cost advantage will fall to the owner and therefore we would expect some of the cost of putting that together to also fall to the owner. Going back to the UEA example, it cost them £70,000 but over three years it has netted them £275,000 in savings. Q93 Mr Evans: So you think that there is likely to be a licensing fee arrangement on behalf of, let us say, Westminster City Council to be able to charge somebody what are likely to be their costs at least? Dr Thurley: I do not think it would work quite like that. I think an owner would employ consultants, architects and maybe other types of consultants also to draw up the drafts of the agreements. I do not think that a local authority or English Heritage would be doing that themselves but we would be responsible for giving them advice. Margaret Hodge: We are not introducing a system of charging anywhere because it is our view that that could have a detrimental effect on people's willingness to protect their heritage assets. Nowhere in the system are we charging but it is the costs that fall to them. Dr Thurley: The only other point I would make is that a Heritage Partnership Agreement can only be put in place with the agreement of the local authority, so if there were a local authority who was deluged by these things, they could say, "Look, I am terribly sorry, we cannot cope with the capacity at the moment, come back next year." I must say I do think that it is unlikely and I think that as the word gets around and as we go on the road and explain to local authorities the significant benefits there can be from this, more and more local authorities will encourage the big estate owners who make multiple, repetitious, slightly pointless sometimes, listed building consent applications to get on and make an agreement. Q94 Mr Evans: Can I move on to Heritage Environment Records. The Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers suggested to us that the costs of maintaining Heritage Environment Records are likely to have been underestimated, what is your view on that? Margaret Hodge: I think we have estimated them appropriately for this spending round. Where they may be right is when they are completely developed, the costs of maintaining them may be higher. All these things have a set-up cost and then a running cost. We have given them the funding for the set-up cost, we have given them running costs of just under a quarter of a million, but I think as we move into the next spending round it may well be that cost will increase and we will look at it. We are not trying to hide anything. Q95 Mr Evans: Can I look at the Draft Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) section which deals with cultural property unlawfully exported from occupied territories and that will become an offence under the Bill. Are you putting pressure on the Foreign Office to draw up a list of territories deemed to have been occupied at some stage since 1954? Margaret Hodge: This is an incredibly complex bit of legislation where we are trying to incorporate the Hague Convention on this issue into UK legislation. We are working with the Foreign Office. I know it is an issue of concern which has been raised by the British Art Market Federation, but we have not got that far yet. This is a UNESCO driven bit of action. UNESCO have not yet put out conditions under which you can define the various categories of heritage protected assets in relation to armed conflict, so we have got a long, long way to go and it is hugely complex. When I started to get my brain around this one, I thought it really is a complicated bit of enactment, well intentioned but we have got to make sure it works practically as well. Q96 Mr Evans: It is the aspirational part of the Bill, is it? Margaret Hodge: We have committed to incorporating it into UK legislation and we will do so. We have to wait for the rules to be set by UNESCO. I think it is very, very difficult, it is a difficult bit of legislation but it is important. Iraq has been the latest example of where without these sorts of protections you would have enormous damage to the heritage assets of a country, but getting something that really works is going to be very, very difficult. I suppose just having it on the statute book of itself will make people very much more careful when they are engaged in armed conflict. I hope that again would be an appropriate expectation out of this particular bit. Q97 Mr Evans: I am not familiar with many of the conditions involved, but I suspect in some cases for its own protection it might be useful to remove, clearly that would be legally, some artefacts for protection, which then would be returned afterwards. Is that generally accepted? Margaret Hodge: It could be. There is an argument as well that if you define too many, they then become targets because who signs up to the Convention and who actually incorporates it into their national legislation. It is a really difficult area and removal and looking after artefacts is right where that is appropriate. What you would do about sites and buildings is much more difficult. Q98 Mr Evans: Particularly as we saw in Afghanistan where they go out of their way to destroy heritage sites. Margaret Hodge: That is the problem. The more you list, is that a good thing or a bad thing, and there is an argument to be had over that. Q99 Chairman: Can I put to you the general concern which has being expressed about this particular Bill. I will give you an opportunity to reassure people. Our Armed Forces are currently deployed in some pretty unpleasant and dangerous parts of the world, sadly we have seen casualties. There is a concern that this Bill will mean that if our Armed Forces come under attack from insurgents and defend themselves and in the course of defending themselves find that they shoot off a bit of the local heritage, they might find they are liable to prosecution. Can you give an absolute assurance that this is not going to in any way restrain the ability of our Armed Forces to defend themselves? Margaret Hodge: I think you raise a very pertinent point and I hope you will bear with me if I say to you, can I write to you to ensure that I do not give you a wrong answer on what is a very complicated issue but I think it is a very, very pertinent point you raise. Q100 Chairman: I can tell you that when we spoke to the Ministry of Defence they seemed relatively happy, but I do know there are a number of people who are very worried about this Bill. I hope you can provide that reassurance because if the Bill is to achieve the universal support, which I am sure you wish to see, I think it is important that is available Margaret Hodge: It is just I do not want to give you a wrong answer. Chairman: We would much rather have a considered and right answer. Q101 Philip Davies: I want to pin you down a bit more on this "enhanced protection" for the list for UNESCO. I take on board the point you have made about the dilemma between making it too wide and having it too narrow, but there seems to be two specific categories which I want to flag up to you in terms of what should be included for "enhanced protection". There are many of them which everybody agrees about, such as world heritage sites obviously, but the two in particular are the historic urban centres which are not world heritage sites, for example Oxford and York, and also the Grade II* listed buildings which it seems you are not currently minded to include on the list but where other people think they are so important that they should be included. I wonder where your thoughts are at the moment on those two specific categories. Margaret Hodge: We have not come to a view on that and the reason we have not come to a view is we have not got the rules from UNESCO. When those are publicly available, we will have to consider the issues. As I have said to you, there are pros and cons in making that list larger or smaller. Again, I do not think this is going to be a process we will want to go through in a hidden way, we would want to be as open as we can through it. Let us wait for the rules from UNESCO and then let us try and make a judgment on where it is in the interest of protecting our heritage to have them in that "enhanced" category rather than in the "general protection" category. Q102 Philip Davies: Simon, can I press you as to what your view is on these two categories in particular? Dr Thurley: I understand that DCMS has listed a number of areas that it feels, in a preliminary sense in absence of the guidance from UNESCO, should be on the list and they are world heritage sites, national museums, copyright libraries and national archives. It does currently, as you state, not include Grade II* listed buildings, it just includes Grade I, which are about 9,000 buildings. I think English Heritage's view would probably be that Grade II* should be included also but that would include another 20,000 buildings. Our view would also be that certain collections which are not currently nationally designated, private collections like the Royal Collection, the Chatsworth Collection or Holkham are also significant collections, but I think the Minister is right, it is quite difficult at the moment in the absence of really clear guidance to know whether that is a strongly held position I have just articulated or whether it is a preference and we just have to wait. Chairman: I think we have come to the end of our questions. Thank you very much. |