Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
40-59)
DEPARTMENT FOR
CULTURE, MEDIA
AND SPORT
AND ENGLISH
HERITAGE
9 NOVEMBER 2009
Q40 Mr Curry: How do you ask them
the questions? What do you do? Do you stop them as they go in?
Dr Thurley: We employ a firm which
is expert in doing these things and they gently and politely ask
people for information.
Q41 Mr Curry: What do they do? Do
they go there for a certain number of days? Let us take Whitby
Abbey, you have to climb about 300 steps to get to the top, it
is lovely when you get there, how do they find how many Muslims
or disabled people have gone to Whitby Abbey?
Dr Thurley: We cannot find out
how many Muslims have gone there but we probably can take a broad
view about how many disabled people have.
Q42 Mr Curry: So they ask somebody
if they are an ethnic minority, do they? How do they do this?
Dr Thurley: This is a level of
detail I am afraid I cannot answer.
Q43 Mr Curry: But, with respect,
since your target is specifically these three groups and since
specifically you have been told you have out-performed in one
area and under-performed in the others, you must know what they
are.
Dr Thurley: I must admit I do
not know, but can tell you in writing later, exactly how our visitors
survey works. We employ a well-known market research company on
a substantial contract which does this piece of work for us and
gives us statistically valid information upon which we can make
decisions and through which we report to the DCMS. Precisely how
it works, I do not know. I have seen them with the clipboards
but I have never been stopped myself and asked.
Q44 Mr Curry: I really would like
to know and I would like to know right down to the detail how
many days they go there, how they do it, do they actually stop
people as they go through the turnstiles and ask, "By the
way, are you an ethnic minority?" I want to know how they
do this because if we are using these statistics we have to be
sure they are well-founded. Stonehenge is in the open air, Whitby
Abbey is in the open air, Clifford's Tower is in the open air,
Tintagel Castle, what is left of it, is in the open air—not
much as far as castles go but there is a lot of history attached
to it—I want to know.[3]
Dr Thurley: However you look at
it, the information we get from our market research is, we believe,
as accurate as it can be and is done in a state of the art way.
Q45 Mr Curry: Are you averaging your
figures or is your target to try and get all these sites up? There
is obviously here a list of your top 10 sites, there are some
which you might describe as more popular than others—popular
in a sort of socio-economic sense which this Report seems to be
written in. You might think Kenwood House would appeal to a different
section of the audience, as it were, as Osborne House might from
those who are attracted by, I do not know, Housestead's Fort or
Whitby Abbey. How do you calibrate it according to destination?
Dr Thurley: You are absolutely
right, different types of sites do tend to attract different types
of people. Families and lower socio-economic groups are more inclined
to go and see a castle or a fort because sometimes they find that
managing young children running riot in a country house is quite
difficult. You do have different types of people who go and visit
different types of sites, that is absolutely correct.
Q46 Mr Curry: What is the optimum
number of representatives of these three groups at your sites?
What number would you get where you would say, "Wow, we have
hit that target, we will concentrate on some other misfortunate
group"?
Dr Thurley: We do not set ourselves
any target for the numbers of the types of people who come to
our sites. However, through the targets with the DCMS, we do look
to see if we can encourage an overall increase in the groups that
have been defined by the DCMS as priority.
Q47 Mr Curry: In terms of the impact
of this, what are you aiming to do? Is this all part of social
cohesion? The Americans have not thought it necessary to do this
and the French have not felt it necessary to do this. Is this
all part of forging a national identity for somebody who might
have come here from Armenia or the badlands of Pakistan?
Dr Thurley: The Chairman asked
me right at the beginning what our overall objective was as an
organisation and our overall objective is to make sure that future
generations can enjoy the heritage of this country at least to
the degree that we can, in other words that things are preserved
and handed on to future generations. That does mean that we need
to invest time and effort in encouraging young people, encouraging
people whose families might not have taken them to see these places
as children, to visit and enjoy them. If we do that what we begin
to ensure is that the next generation of people who come along
actually appreciate and enjoy and look after heritage for themselves.
Q48 Mr Curry: Let me ask you one
more question. I read history so I am rather keen on this. As
you say, in my constituency I have got enough heritage to put
everybody else to shame, pretty well. You are an expert in the
Tudors and Tudor architecture, I am right, am I not? I have watched
some of your programmes as a matter of fact, extremely interesting,
even though the Tudors were a fairly minor dynasty from a fairly
minor country.
Dr Thurley: True.
Mr Curry: They were bailed out by Elizabeth
I really, but were followed by the Stuarts who were even worse.
When you watched the BBC series The Tudors, if you could
bring yourself to do that, do you think that was assisting heritage,
watching Henry cavort around in designer boxer shorts?
Chairman: I am not sure that is in order.
We all know it was a ridiculous programme.
Nigel Griffiths: It is on page seven
of your brief.
Chairman: I am not sure Simon Thurley
is responsible for things on the BBC.
Q49 Mr Curry: My question is does
that sort of thing on the television stimulate an interest in
heritage?
Mr Stephens: Yes.
Q50 Mr Curry: After having watched
this Neighbours view of the Tudors—I mean if Anne
of Cleves had been as pretty as she was portrayed there Henry
would not have kicked her out, would he, no sane man would have
done that—does it have an impact on people's perception
of heritage? Does this grotesque distortion of British history
have an impact, positive, negative?
Dr Thurley: I must confess that—
Q51 Mr Curry: You did not watch it?
Dr Thurley: —I did take
the view that it was rubbish so I did not watch it.
Q52 Mr Curry: It might be a target
to make you watch it, if you are not careful!
Dr Thurley: It is possible. However,
what I would say is that heritage on television and history on
television is not only extremely popular but directly stimulates
visits to—
Mr Curry: The best watch for a long time
was John Adams on BBC4. It was outstandingly the best historical
drama there has been for years and years.
Chairman: Mr Griffiths, over to you now.
Nigel Griffiths: If I might say Dan Brown's
book, bad though it is, stimulated great interest in Rosslyn Chapel.
Mr Curry: At least it was not a Second
World War reprise, like most of the things we watch nowadays.
Q53 Nigel Griffiths: Dr Thurley and
Mr Stephens, I see a strong case for investing in heritage as
well as making access as widely available as possible because
it is, sadly, a minority participatory interest but we require
all taxpayers to contribute to it and, therefore, the wider we
can engage people the more, hopefully, they will not resent their
taxes going to it. Second, and for me even more important, is
the enjoyment that people get from it when they discover it.
Mr Stephens: Can I clarify one
point because it is not actually a minority interest, something
like 70%, our survey suggests, participate,[4]
that means visit two or more properties in a year and that is
higher than, for example, go to the cinema. I think I am supporting
your case.
Q54 Nigel Griffiths: I am delighted to
hear it and perhaps I should declare an interest as a member of
the National Trust for Scotland. Box 2, the case study, must give
you a great deal of satisfaction when a teacher says "probably
the best school trip ever in 12 years of teaching". Do you
get a lot of that in terms of feedback?
Dr Thurley: We do and all our
educational activities are not only extremely popular but recognised
as such. In the last three years we have won 18 awards for our
educational activities so, yes, it is well recognised.
Q55 Nigel Griffiths: The table on
page 10 which seems to show a moderate decline—in fact 100,000
decline—in the number of free educational visits, how much
of that is the responsibility of you, how much of it is of schools
and parsimonious councils redirecting the resources and not giving
funding for that sort of trip?
Dr Thurley: It is very sad, but
over the last seven or eight years there has been a marked decline
in school visits to all heritage sites, not just English Heritage
sites. There are a number of reasons for it but most of the reasons
are to do with the difficulties about taking children out of school
to see heritage sites. There are concerns about health and safety
and concerns about the cost of hiring a coach, there are concerns
about finding necessary cover when the teacher leaves the classroom
and takes a bunch of schoolchildren out for a day, and all those
sorts of difficulties actually make teachers reluctant very often
to visit heritage sites. It is quite often easier for them to
see things that are in town. If they are a city centre school,
they can go to a museum. It is much easier doing that than getting
on a coach and going out to Fountains Abbey, for instance, which
is expensive and involves them filling in risk assessments.
Q56 Nigel Griffiths: Are the targets
realistic then?
Dr Thurley: I think our initial
target which was set for us at the beginning of this period was
not realistic and I do not think we fully appreciated when the
650,000 target was set just how difficult that was going to be
to fulfil. As you see we failed to meet that target and the reasons
for it I have explained.
Q57 Nigel Griffiths: The actual drop-off,
is it more difficult in terms of funding health and safety, et
cetera, now as against 2003-04, your perception of that?
Dr Thurley: No, I think it is
as difficult in many ways but I think that what we are clearer
about now is what the problems are in attracting school visits
and we are in a much better position now to devise strategies
which will overcome some of those concerns. For instance, we can
make, as it were, ready-made risk assessments for schools, they
do not have to do complicated work before they can see the site.
We can go into the schools and explain to teachers what it is
they see when they get to the site and provide them with materials.
For that reason in our new funding agreement we have agreed a
percentage figure of increase for school visits which we think
is more realistic than what was agreed five years ago.
Q58 Nigel Griffiths: The NAO Report
says that the cost to English Heritage of a visitor as a school
visitor is £9 a visitor. Is this every visitor, including
staff time?
Dr Thurley: No, that figure refers
to the school visits that come on what we call Discovery Visits
where we give particularly intensive treatment and provide a member
of staff who sits down with the children and helps them through.
That is the most expensive part of what we do and we do think
we should try and get that cost down. We have our own target of
reducing it down to about £6.
Q59 Nigel Griffiths: Do you intend
to continue with it?
Dr Thurley: We intend to continue
with Discovery Visits, yes, we think they are very effective.
3 Ev 15 Back
4
Note by witness: "over
70%" relates to adults visiting at least one historic site
as measured in 2007-08. The measure for "at least two visits"
was introduced for PSA 21 in 2008-09 and the figure was 56.9%.
The criteria for participation in PSA 3 was one or more visit
to an historic site in the last 12 months, with the figure for
those participation in 2007-08 being 71.1%. PSA 21 uses two or
more visits to an historic site in the last 12 months as the criteria
for participation. Using this criteria 56.9% of the population
took part in 2008-09. Back
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