50 C O N T E X T 1 3 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 4 Adding to the special role the IHBC could lay in this process was the fact that IHBC’s positive engagement with HERs and SMRs on these matters had been a longstanding one. The IHBC has invested a huge amount of time and effort in supporting discussions and generating awareness around the needs identified under HER21. Throughout these discussions, the particular concern for the IHBC has been the extent to which the ambitions of the HER concept might be harnessed to deliver effective conservation. There was also a personal dimension to the interest, one that perhaps justifies also my writing up the project here, and certainly one that echoes a genuine concern for information-relatedmanagement that reverberates across the entire IHBCmembership. Reflecting the HER-duality identified at the opening of this article, my own work history was at first more involved in dealing with information as a cultural and historical resource rather than in conservation as such. From a core training in architectural history in Ireland,where from the early 1980s I hadworked in the Irish Architectural Archives – Ireland’s national HER – to running my own consultancy in the 1990s, and then serving as CEO of Scotland’s national amenity society, the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland, I have experienced directly the evolution of information values, from it being a resource for cultural understanding to one where it serves as a tool in conservation. Appreciating how building information can contribute to planning without compromising its cultural values could inform the trajectory of the archaeology-based records from SMRs to HERs. Further, my experience of working with information derived from architectural practice (an area largely untouched in SMRs and HERs) simultaneously could help inform understanding of how that information might most easily and economically enhance built environment compliance standards in both. All that said, it was the project manager, Fiona Newton, who shaped themethodologies, content and interpretation of the work by carrying out the actual research, investigation and interpretation. Her own experience of working alongside and with HERs as a conservation officer was critical to ensure balance between the ambitions attached to IHBC user-needs – including my own HER-leaning legacy of cultural interests – and the practicalities of HER operations. This meant that the project could test the aspirations of prospective users against the legacies of HER managers. The methodology is documented best in the report. It built on the IHBC’s substantial project-based investment in HER development prior to HER21, notably an IHBChosted, English Heritage-funded seminar day working with the Greater London SMR and conservation officers in 2007. The scoping and testing of the project focused on the four national areas of data that, from that and other research, had been most commonly requested as a priority for inclusion in HERs: information on individual buildings; photographic archives; items from published sources; and additional maps. This scoping work was a critical focus for the IHBC’s new work as it had been generated by prospective HER Seán O’Reilly, director@ihbc.org.uk users practicing in the built environment, unconstrained by presumed limitations to the nature of the service. As such it established ‘the first nationally-supported listing of building-related information for consideration by HERs in prioritising the creation of HPR-consistent HERs’. The heart of the work was consultation with HER practitioners on the potential to enhance HER standards in these areas above and to determine practical solutions that might deliver on the ambitions of the HER concept. Our work generated the following recommendations: •• Establish consistency in HER standards by incorporating agreed baseline data on the built environment, with recommendations including specific classes of architectural information from that contained in architectural practices (with precedent and viability set by Scotland’s ‘national HER’, RCAHMS), select web resources and viable core architectural heritage sources (for example exploring Pevsners). •• Establish specialist local advisory ‘commissions’ to agree priorities for local information in individual HERs. •• Develop the Heritage Gateway to serve as an interface between the national and local HER priorities for built environment information. •• Develop a dedicated national resource for architectural information to serve as an integration of and interface between the above priorities, with the starting point being the essential body of information collected in the publications and archives of Sir Howard Colvin. As the report concluded: ‘There is no single, simple route to the challenge of establishing HERs as a coherent information interface between the built environment and the historic environment. However if the recommendations here are adopted by HERs nationally then those HERs could be considered to be consistent with HPR aspirations in terms of the inclusion of the built environment information.’ The very first step in making a credible case for the statutory HER, it is clear, lies in taking forward these recommendations or, at least, the issues they raise. I understand that English Heritage is looking to establish more credible and substantial building-related resources inside HERs as it draws together the conclusions of HER21 and plans a way forward. The IHBC looks forward to contributing to that future as it is clear that one critical starting point has been established through our work on HER21.
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