52 C O N T E X T 1 3 3 : M A R C H 2 0 1 4 the National Heritage Protection Plan Advisory Board (for England). This sector-wide body oversees English Heritage’s research programmes and helps integrate other bodies’ programmes too. English Heritage is looking to develop NHPP 2. A workshop is planned to garner ideas. In January I had the pleasure of meeting Sir Laurie Magnus, the new chairman of English Heritage.We found many areas of mutual concern and interest. It will come as no surprise to hear that the proposed split of English Heritage was a key topic. Discussions turned around the many complex issues this has generated. I raised our concerns that Historic England (if that is what the new regulatory body is to be called) must be properly resourced and robust in delivering its role within the sector in England. Much of that will depend on the Treasury fulfilling the commitments it has made to both Historic England and the new charity. In turn, that commitment, I suspect, will depend on the pressure we, our allies and the wider public can place on politicians not to betray our heritage. All the more reason to up our campaigning. In that vein, the IHBC has accepted an invitation from the Cut the VAT campaign to jointly fund research into the impact that VAT is having on the UK building industry (and, by extension, the growth of the wider economy).We have often been told by the chancellor that high levels of income tax are a disincentive to enterprise and are tax inefficient, a fiscal theory he has already put in place through the reduction in the higher rate of income tax. Why does this theory not apply to VAT? VAT is simply a sales (and regressive) tax. If applied at too high a level, it must act as a disincentive to purchase, suppress demand and, therefore, be tax-inefficient. The Cut-the-VAT campaign believes that a significant reduction on VAT for building (and therefore heritage) works (the focus is on the labour element) will help make currently marginal schemes (such as many heritage-at-risk projects) viable again; will stimulate demand, house building, restoration and conversion projects; and will boost jobs and the UK economy. As I write, preparations are underway for the IHBC to jointly launch this new research at a House of Commons reception on 3 March. I will report on events and this developing debate in my next column. I trust that members will help back this continuing campaign at every opportunity. We know how important our work is to the wider economy and the brakes put on us by poorly thoughtthrough government policies. It is time to change hearts and minds. Again in campaigning mode, the developing relationship with the archaeology world has seen strong cooperation over our mutual concerns at the loss of jobs within our two professional areas. The All Party Parliamentary Group on Archaeology has been stirred into action following talks with the minister about the current decline in that area, and it has been commissioned to carry out a survey and consult on the issue. An invitation has been extended to the IHBC to submit our evidence gathered over the last few years about the parallel decline in conservation capacity across the UK. This can only help our campaigning efforts to stem the current decline and push the benefits of heritage – both conservation and archaeology – to our economy and national well-being. Many thanks to our colleagues at the IfA. These headline activities do not happen on their own. Below the waterline the paddling is fast and furious. This period has seen a full range of council and committee meetings, and I continue in my quest to get to as many as possible. In between there are hundreds of emails and lots of phone calls keeping everything afloat, and head-to-head meetings in coffee bars and pubs agreeing strategies and priorities. A continuing and, I have to say difficult, undertaking is the governance review – trying to develop a modern structure for the IHBC. It seems that we have a very unusual structure. Trying to balance the competing needs for efficient and responsive management with the growing realisation that we need to be more transparent and democratic is proving to be a major and demanding task.You will hear more about this in due course. It has not been all toil and sweat. Just before Christmas I represented the IHBC at the 60th anniversary celebrations of the National Churches Trust at Westminster Abbey and again at the end of the year at a reception for the Historic Towns Forum. I wish members could hear the very appreciative comments about the IHBC that I receive at such events.We must be doing something right. Mike Brown, chair@ihbc.org.uk From the preface to The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius While your divine intelligence and will, Imperator Caesar, were engaged in acquiring the right to command the world, and while your fellow citizens, when all their enemies had been laid low by your invincible valour, were glorying in your triumph and victory — while all foreign nations were in subjection awaiting your beck and call, and the Roman people and senate, released from their alarm, were beginning to be guided by your most noble conceptions and policies, I hardly dared, in view of your serious employments, to publish my writings and long considered ideas on architecture, for fear of subjecting myself to your displeasure by an unseasonable interruption. But when I saw that you were giving your attention not only to the welfare of society in general and to the establishment of public order, but also to the providing of public buildings intended for utilitarian purposes, so that not only should the state have been enriched with provinces by your means, but that the greatness of its power might likewise be attended with distinguished authority in its public buildings, I thought that I ought to take the first opportunity to lay before you my writings on this theme. For in the first place it was this subject which made me known to your father, to whom I was devoted on account of his great qualities. After the council of heaven gave him a place in the dwellings of immortal life and transferred your father’s power to your hands, my devotion continuing unchanged as I remembered him inclined me to support you. And so with Marcus Aurelius, Publius Minidius and Gnaeus Cornelius, I was ready to supply and repair ballistae, scorpiones and other artillery, and I have received rewards for good service with them... Owing to this favour I need have no fear of want to the end of my life, and being thus laid under obligation I began to write this work for you, because I saw that you have built and are now building extensively, and that in future also you will take care that our public and private buildings shall be worthy to go down to posterity by the side of your other splendid achievements. I have drawn up definite rules to enable you, by observing them, to have personal knowledge of the quality both of existing buildings and of those which are yet to be constructed. For in the following books I have disclosed all the principles of the art.
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