Written evidence submitted by Surrey County
Council (arts 201)
1. Reduction in funding from local government
may result in lack of support to small and medium sized museums
that often hold important collections, are important to local
communities and are increasingly important to tourism in small
and medium sized towns. Loss of small and medium sized museums
will lead to the permanent loss of items of heritage and culture,
long-term loss of means of involvement of people in their local
heritage, destruction of local partnerships and loss of skills
built up over recent years. Any central funding review must take
account of the needs of such museums, especially those run by
local government. Such a review will also need to take into account
the ongoing need to provide direct support and advice for local
museums, eg through the provision of Museum Development Officers,
in order to enable museums to run with either a very small staff
or to be entirely volunteer run. Local museums, including local
voluntary museums, represent excellent value for money, but they
cannot provide an adequate service without the support of professionals
who can give direct and specific advice. In association to this,
there is an as yet unknown impact of recent changes to DCMS arm's-length
bodies—in particular the abolition the Museums, Libraries
and Archives Council (MLA). It must be emphasised that it is essential
to have a central staff who understand museum and heritage issues,
who can take a strategic view and who will be able to drive the
development of museums for all their aims including artefact preservation,
public involvement and tourism. The abolition of the MLA places
such central expertise in jeopardy.
2. Considering the example of the Woking
Palace Project in Surrey, it is clear that a very small input
of capital from central and local government sources—eg
central government via the HLF and local government via the county,
district or borough councils—together with thoughtful support
provided by in-house local government heritage specialists, can
have a very large positive impact on the local community. The
Woking Palace Project:
(a) responds to an identified and pressing need
for specialist training, a need identified, moreover, by the community
itself, and not imposed from above;
(b) is a true partnership of different public,
voluntary and private sector bodies, including local government,
charities, universities and industry;
(c) has successfully raised the public profile
of an internationally significant historic site, helping the site's
improved present and future management;
(d) contributes to the "knowledge economy"
of the UK by providing new specialist archaeological data as part
of wider research aims and agendas. Projects such as the Woking
Palace Project are an exceptional example of the Prime Minister's
plans for "Big Society" at work, and should be considered
a model for future such plans in the UK.
In this light, it is worth bearing in mind just
how many people already volunteer in heritage organisations: there
are over 5,000 heritage bodies in the UK and more than 400,000
people volunteer in heritage activities every year. Of these,
archaeology alone contributes over 2,000 community archaeology
groups with over 200,000 members. Heritage Open Days are the biggest
annual voluntary cultural event in England: in 2009 these attracted
over one million people to over 4,000 local events and sites,
representing an in-kind contribution of time by volunteers to
the cash value of £3.8 million. Surrey is a particularly
good example of this at work at the local level. A series of voluntary
sector groups, including (but not exclusive to) the Surrey Archaeological
Society, Surrey History Trust, Surrey Historic Buildings Trust
and Surrey Gardens Trust, have between them thousands of members
of all ages, background and experience, working in partnership
with one-another and local government to provide the equivalent
of tens of thousands of pounds worth of time and expertise every
year.
3. An estimated over £120 million is
contributed to the UK economy each year through the heritage planning
regulatory system under Planning Policy Statement 5: Planning
for the Historic Environment (and it is estimated that there was
a total of 6233 individuals in UK archaeological employment as
of 1 April 2010 (Aitchison 2010: 1)). Over 90% of archaeological
work undertaken in the UK is done so under these planning system
terms, at little cost to central government (except in the provision
of specialist advice and services via English Heritage) (and bearing
in mind that the DCMS budget represents only 0.8% of total government
spending: with only 4% of this budget (0.032% of total government
spending) directly funding the heritage sector), and at equally
little cost to local government (except through the provision
of historic environment conservation/development control teams).
The current system of investment in the historic environment via
the planning system is an extremely cost-effective one that is
the envy of many other countries. It is a very "light touch"
part of the regulatory system wherein minimal government involvement
leads to a generally very high standard of work done on historic
sites in advance of development. Moreover, since reformed by the
introduction of PPS5 in March 2010 this system makes a commitment
to local community and voluntary sector involvement precisely
in line with current government priorities towards community/stakeholder
involvement.
September 2010
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