C O N T E X T 1 4 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 5 53 IHBC’s participation have rapidly gathered pace across our expansive sectoral interests. This adds further to the demands on our cohort of skilled staff and active volunteers. Kate Kendall, our LETS liaison officer, has spoken to, among others, the archaeologists’ CIfA conference; our research consultant Bob Kindred has formalised our connections with England’s national amenity interests, while also generating our new pansector research and guidance Notes accessible on our new online Toolbox; and our projects officer Fiona Newton has been re-interpreting threads and implications arising from our Historic England-funded local authority capacity survey for England. Volunteers have been no less busy. Our policy and education secretaries David Kincaid and David MacDonald have been contributing to a wide range of operations, not least of which is the development of the Place Alliance, and liaising with conservation courses; our president, Trefor Thorpe, has continued to cultivate senior professional links across conservation interests in mainstream professional bodies, while our chair, Mike Brown, has been (among other things) championing service benchmarking and the practicalities of enhanced accreditation protocols. I too have been doing my bit: for example, telling a programme linked to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills that the IHBC’s postings of work tenders for our HESPR businesses constituted a remarkable £191 million to £233 million of works from January to May alone, and that was only what was costed. Those are eye-popping figures for a register that has only just passed 25 members. My other events over the last few months include representation at Civic Voice’s All-Party Parliamentary Group; going to Washington as a guest of the CyArk programme to contribute thoughts on the application of their work to practical conservation; speaking to regeneration specialists at Liverpool’s Regen15; and contributing IHBC perspectives on the heritage research and science agendas in Oxford (twice) and in University College London, as part of the Bartlett Institute for Sustainable Heritage programme on heritage science (SEAHA – Google it for more information). Forthcoming calls include Dublin, with ICOMOS; building control officers; the annual conference of the newly re-constituted COTAC (now the Council on Training in Architectural Conservation); and, for project work, with partner interests such as Civic Voice and the Historic Towns Forum. In the context of conservation initiatives, skills and practice remain central. It is especially heartening that so much of this collective work is focused increasingly on an appreciation of the IHBC’s legacy of standards, data, research and knowledge. ICOMOS criteria are finally appearing in central government discussions around consent-related accreditation and local authority benchmarking; our local authority data for England, Scotland and Wales are helping initiate new advocacy strategies for services across planning, conservation and archaeological investigation; in Wales, with its Historic Environment Bill draft, and Northern Ireland, with its newly localised planning services, discussions on what should be done where, and by whom are evolving fast (and all the better for being informed by the IHBC’s active input); and pretty much everywhere people are looking at how better to integrate with regulatory processes the substantial potential of skills both in the private and voluntary sectors. In all these areas the institute is using its skills, knowledge and experience – from across our staff, volunteers, research and services – to advocate viable structural solutions New president for IHBC David McDonald of the London branch was elected president of the IHBC at the trustees meeting on 8 September. Formerly the IHBC’s education secretary, McDonald replaces Trefor Thorpe, who served four years as president. ‘It is a great privilege for me to be able to take on this role,’ McDonald says. ‘We live in very challenging times for building conservation, not least because of the sharp reduction in the number of local authority conservation officers since the start of the recession. ‘I look forward to working with colleagues and others in the planning and historic environment sectors to tackle this issue. At the same time I will strive to improve opportunities for training to ensure that IHBC members work to the highest of professional standards.’ in these challenging times. However, to understand these issues better, and to generate more effective advocacy, we need to enhance the institute’s information and research resources and capacity – that is to say, the scientific base to our advocacy – as our newly agreed corporate plan indicates. In making the case for conservation, we must demonstrate that the historic achievements in our discipline – across ICOMOS skills and BS 7913 practice – remain at the heart of conservation. To do this we must generate solid evidence to underpin them, and take them beyond the mantra of belief into the evidence of science. The IHBC, like the sector as a whole, needs to offer sound, scientific, research-based evidence for all those affirmations about conservation skills and practice espoused in our testamentary BS and our skills codification by ICOMOS. Sound science is essential to underpin our work, and framing the questions that need to be answered is the starting point. So if you do have any questions about the underpinnings of conservation skills and practice, ones that you think would benefit from more data, research and science, please let me know.We will add them to our growing list, which itself will be the subject of another of my columns soon. Seán O’Reilly, director@ihbc.org.uk
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=