34 C O N T E X T 9 3 : M A R C H 2 0 0 6 Notes from the chair The price of everything and the value of heritage Recently I visited the planet Thinktank – a place where people actually say things like ‘Metrics to populate the outcome basket…’ Elsewhere in the space-time continuum I was on planet earth, at a rather large and grand conference on ‘Capturing the public value of heritage’ in the tasteful surroundings of the Royal Geographical Society (Norman Shaw 1873, Grade I). Well, someone has to do it, but this was a surprisingly heartening and worthwhile occasion. What we saw and heard just might be the turning of the tide. For a quarter of a century government at all levels, national and local, has been swept along by the tide of new public management (NPM), a belief system that originated in the USA, crossed the Atlantic like a tsunami, and has eventually lapped its way even into our own remote creeks of public administration.Yes, even into the management of the historic environment. The central tenet of this creed seems to be that everything has a price, and that therefore everything is measurable in terms of cost and time. That is what has driven the arcane and depressing world of performance indicators, targets and so on that some of us know all too well, and the short-termism that goes with it. All of a sudden Oscar Wilde’s denunciation of the man who ‘knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’ has struck a chord. It has apparently struck it in No 10, no less. The big story at this conference, which was addressed by no fewer than three ministers (Jowell, Lammy and Andrews), was that ‘public value’ should be the big driver of government. Public value is what the public values. So now the public are ‘citizens rather than just consumers’ (to quote Tessa Jowell) and quality of life is what really matters. It was fascinating to hear the old ideals of public service being reinvented in 21st century language. So, for example, public value in a democracy is created by ‘responsiveness to refined preferences’ (eg Jamie Oliver and the school dinners revolution) and is measured ‘through capacity rather than through outputs’. Public consultation gives way to ‘public conversation’. How will this affect us and how can we help? First of all it has to get through the party wall (Grade I) between No 10 and No 11, so don’t hold your breath.We know that ‘identity’ is politically persuasive, so perhaps there is more readiness to understand quality issues than before, but then I am an optimist by nature. Actually, the historic environment sector was well ahead of the game in all this, through that remarkably prescient document that is only now coming into its own – Power of Place. A strange amalgam of that insight and idealism with the last flush of the old NPM is bringing us the Heritage Protection Review, and promises us the resulting heritage white paper this summer. Right now these big changes in the mechanisms of conservation are making the biggest demands on the institute, as we are closely involved in the discussion and detailed drafting that could make or mar our work for a generation. It is no coincidence that all of this is bringing us into ever closer working relationships with other professional bodies involved with the historic environment, and in particular with archaeology. And now for something completely different. Jo Hibbert, Ian Constantinides and I had watched in horror as the television cameras recorded the stripping out and aggrandisement of a listed Victorian rectory in Surrey, and the attack of the angle grinders on listed Pennine stonework. Then well over two million people saw the same things, but with a strong and impassioned message that this is not the way to conserve a historic building. Those millions also got the implicit message that this may not be right, but that you will probably get away with it if that is what you really want to do. This has all come as quite a shock to the world of conservation – it shocked me – but perhaps we should see it as a reality check. The shocking reality is that building conservation standards out there in the real world of yellow pages and white vans are often very low. This is not usually through malice. It is through the ignorance of owners, specifiers and builders of basic conservation values – that word again – and ignorance by specifiers and builders of the resultant techniques. How should we as a profession respond? Should we retreat from the imperfections of mass media into a pure world of mystery and perfection? Should we rely on prosecution and enforcement as the routine remedy for this assault on the wider public interest? Or should we regard this as another opportunity for the education, training and outreach that is all too obviously lacking? JohnYates, chair@ihbc.org.uk
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