The Government is expected to publish a consultation paper on the future of historic environment protection on Thursday 17 July{1}.

The consultation paper is part of a review being carried out by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport with English Heritage. The Review is examining regimes for protecting the historic environment through such means as listing buildings, scheduling ancient monuments, registering parks and gardens and designating Conservation Areas. The review is also considering the way historic assets are managed once they have been designated for protection.  It provides a welcome and timely opportunity to secure a better system for protecting the historic environment. There are also risks, however, that responses to calls to simplify and streamline the system will mean the historic environment will lose out.

The review follows on from A Force for Our Future (2001), which set out the Government's vision for the historic environment and identified the need to review heritage designations. Concerns expressed about the current system include inconsistency between different regimes, leading to delay and confusion; unclear criteria; the absence of positive action, such as management, following designation; and a reluctance by local authorities to exercise their power to withdraw permitted development rights in Conservation Areas{2}.  There are also huge gaps in our knowledge. Lack of information, monitoring and positive management means that our heritage is being lost or damaged every day{3}.

CPRE believes that conservation controls are among the most important reasons that places of character and quality survive. Development pressures are often greatest in areas with a wealth of historic assets. For example, a large part of rural Essex and the M11 is targeted as a growth area in the Government's Sustainable Communities Plan{4}. Some of our most attractive environments would be put at risk were conservation controls weakened. Reviews such as these often focus disproportionately on the built environment when the historic environment is just as important to rural areas, both to the communities who live there and for the wider national interest.  The review should ensure that the historic environment of rural areas and the issues and challenges it faces receive sufficient attention.

CPRE believes a reformed system should deliver the following:

Robust protection for the historic environment
CPRE believes that there should continue to be a strong level of protection given to the historic environment. The system could be improved to make it easier to understand and operate for everyone. This should not result in a decline in the level of protection for heritage.  Currently there are separate regimes for recognising heritage assets, such as listing buildings, scheduling monuments and registering parks and gardens, and each works differently. These might beneficially be brought closer together.

Positive management and responsible stewardship
There is an urgent need for positive management of historic assets following designation. Once listed, buildings are protected against damage or demolition, to a large degree, but there is no protection against inadequate maintenance or neglect. Sadly, this pattern of designation followed by neglect is all too common. Designation should be followed by (but not depend upon), a programme of positive management aimed at repair (if necessary), re-use, maintenance and enhancement.

Resources for heritage
An effective system for protecting the historic environment needs to be properly resourced at all levels. This means local planning authorities employing sufficient specialist, qualified staff to identify and monitor the historic environment, make informed decisions, advise and where necessary take enforcement action{5}.  Local community and civic amenity groups are an under-utilised resource who can and often do carry out conservation work, for example, identifying what is important and monitoring change in their environment. But these should not be seen as an alternative to properly resourced planning departments.

Fiscal reforms such as reducing or removing VAT on building repairs and conversions (most currently taxed at 17 1/2 per cent) would free up resources for heritage protection and redress the imbalance between new build, which attracts no VAT, and refurbishment. VAT on building repairs acts as a disincentive to maintaining properties in a good state of repair and to bringing empty buildings back into use.

A vision of the historic environment broad enough to encompass historic landscape and wider settings
The historic environment is all around us, it includes not only buildings and their settings, ancient monuments and archaeological remains, but also landscapes, orchards, meadows, parks, squares and gardens. As well as protecting individual features of historic value, greater use should be made of landscape and townscape character assessments to guide decision making.

Value the locally distinctive as well as the exceptional and rare
The historic environment encompasses everyday places where people live and work as well as the more unusual, exceptional and rare.  It is important that a system for protecting the historic environment should be able to articulate and protect the things that people treasure.

Actively engage communities in identifying and looking after what is locally distinctive
This means engaging local people in defining what is important in their area, encouraging and supporting them to look after it and drawing upon their knowledge of local history and traditions as a positive tool to guide conservation and change.

Conservation-led regeneration, where needed
Conservation provides a sound basis for regeneration.  The most successful and attractive places to live, work and visit are usually those with a wealth of historic assets. Rather than being seen as a barrier to progress, conservation should provide the starting point to assess whether change is desirable, appropriate or harmful.  

Articulate and express clearly in easily understood terms why historic sites, buildings and assets are valuable for society and how to protect them.
Clear values and criteria will be vital to ensure the system is easy to understood and use and effective in protecting the historic environment. As well as clear criteria for listing buildings, individual descriptions should be given as to why a particular building has been listed (or other feature designated) to assist future maintenance and use.

Recognise and promote the cultural, environmental, educational and economic benefits as well as the intrinsic value of the historic environment
The historic environment is highly valued by most people{6}.  As a source of inspiration, beauty and identity, it is an inheritance that we should take responsibility for passing on to future generations. A robust system for protecting the historic environment should recognise that it is worth protecting for its own sake, and at the same time give greater recognition to the wider benefits of conservation.

The historic environment is important for what it can teach us about how people lived in the past.  A Mori survey found that 98% of people consider the historic environment an important educational asset{7}.  Providing educational opportunities at all levels for people of all ages, it has an important role to play in lifelong learning.  As stated in Lie of the Land, 'How can we learn from a place, if what makes it beautiful is gone?  When we trade an ancient market for a car park, or a pocket of water meadows for a by-pass, we sever these links to the land and the past'{8}.

The historic environment makes a significant contribution to the economy. The UK's popularity as a tourist destination rests to a large degree on the quality of its historic environment. Overseas visitors cite historic buildings as one of the main reasons for visiting this country{9}.  Tourism expenditure totalled £75 billion in 2000. Tourism accounts for around 8% of jobs and 5% of GDP in the UK.

Conservation is good for the environment. Repairing and re-using buildings rather than demolishing them conserves scarce resources, such as energy and building materials, and minimises waste. Conservation also contributes to the quality of the environment by helping areas retain their identity, continuity with the past, character and sense of place.

Welcome change where this is beneficial to the historic environment and resist change where this would be harmful
Any system that is to protect the historic environment effectively needs to recognise that development or change is not always appropriate.  Such a system would provide the basis for managing change while conserving what is best in our environment.

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. Protecting Our Historic Environment: Making the System Work Better will be published by DCMS. Public consultation will run for three months. This is expected to be followed by the publication of a White Paper early in 2004.

2. Over time, significant damage to conservation areas has been caused by incremental change whereby the character of conservation areas has been harmed as a result of inappropriate extensions or alterations, window replacements or other actions.

3. An estimated 22,500 ancient monuments - one per day - have been destroyed since 1945. Power of Place, page 16, English Heritage, 2000.

4. The Sustainable Communities Plan Sustainable Communities: building for the future was launched in a statement by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. John Prescott MP, to the House of Commons on 5 February. The Plan suggests that there is potential for 200,000 more houses in the wider South East - an area encompassing Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Essex, London and Kent - up to 2016, in addition to the 39,000 per annum guide figure already contained in Regional Planning Guidance for the South East (2001).

5. 1 in 5 planning authorities (85) do not employ a qualified conservation officer. Power of Place, paragraph 92.

6. A MORI survey conducted for English Heritage in 2000 found that people care strongly about the historic environment. 87% thought there should be public funding to protect it.  88% thought the historic environment important for jobs and 85% for promoting regeneration. Mori surveyed a representative sample of 3,000 people.

7. See note 6.

8. Lie of the Land, CPRE, 2003.

9. National Trust study quoted in Force for Our Future, page 46, DCMS, 2001.