44 C O N T E X T 1 3 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 5 the country. In a world full of poachers, some might say we need gamekeepers all the more.Yet conservation officer posts continue to be cut, capacity is reduced and the government becomes increasingly deaf to the sector’s pleas. We really do now have a first-world heritage legislative system and thirdworld resources to administer it. I have looked at the evidence (the levying of VAT on works with listed building consent, the refusal to consider the case for tax credits for owners of listed buildings, the blind eye to the loss of conservation posts) and have concluded that the obsession with cutting the national debt is now so pervasive withinWestminster that politicians of all stripes have abandoned any pretence to support Britain’s heritage adequately. If we as heritage professionals are not to preside over the accelerating entropy, erosion and loss of our heritage, we must be prepared to consider afresh how it might yet be saved. If the taxpayer (or at least our politicians who direct public finances) will not pay for the network of conservation officers the system demands, what are the alternatives? How can we reinvent the system such that owners and developers are properly incentivised to better care for the heritage they own? How do we nudge them into being better custodians? To free ourselves up to face this question, I fear that we must give up one particular romantic notion that no longer holds true: the argument that owners have had listing imposed on them and that they carry a burden, therefore, on behalf of the nation, in compensation for which the state should provide free conservation advice and free consent applications. This might once have been true. But most owners now have willingly bought their property knowing it to be listed. Indeed, estate agents think listing is a strong sales point that adds value (which English Heritage research demonstrates averages at 11 per cent). That enhanced value should help support the owner in the better maintenance of the property. As for the burden of having to make consent applications for alterations and extensions (and, no doubt, demolitions), the evidence is clear that the vast majority of such applications are done in the ordinary pursuit of a profit. As such, like any other professional fee attached to the design and delivery of a project, that cost, and the heritage expert to support it, could and should be written into the project’s balance. Only if it is viable should it go ahead. When I think of the range of professionals often involved in building projects, be it architects, valuation surveyors, building surveyors, quantity surveyors, structural engineers, M&E engineers, project managers, consultant planners, landscape architects, traffic and transport consultants, CDM coordinators, and so on, it is noticeable that it is only the local authority conservation officer who provides often crucial advice to the success of the project gratis. Is it any wonder that owners and their organisations are currently so vexed at the loss of this invaluable resource: the free advice of the local authority conservation officer? It is an unavoidable fact that, with the network of conservation officers stripped back to the bone, owners have to face a choice between proceeding in ignorance (with all the risks that involves – including imprisonment) or, to fill the void, employing their own heritage advisors directly. As the former puts at risk our nation’s heritage, faced with the reality that no foreseeable government will reverse the cuts in conservation officer posts, we must turn our thinking as to how we can deliver the latter. It is unlikely that any government would offer fiscal incentives (which would, of course, delay paying off the national debt), so the question for the sector is: can we devise a system of procedural advantage that would incentivise owners and developers to employ their own heritage advisors directly? To ensure confidence in any such system, each of the built environment professional bodies would have to have in place an appropriate system for accreditation of their members in conservation practice (remembering that, unlike the IHBC, most of them do not specialise in the heritage sector, so would need to identify and accredit those of their members who do). Owners and developers could then have confidence that they were commissioning suitably skilled experts. The IHBC is well-placed in this regard, particularly as our framework of competencies maps precisely with the recognised national and international standards. A further discipline must be that accredited heritage experts are required to acknowledge a superior obligation to the asset itself (rather as a barrister has a superior obligation to the court). The appointed heritage expert would begin with an appraisal of special interest and significance in the usual way. It might be that consent for the owner’s proposals would not be required, in which case they could proceed (subject to any planning or building control approval). A key advantage of this system would be that heritage considerations would be front-loaded into the project and design process – certainly when compared with the current consent system where, for want of a freely available conservation officer, the project gets properly assessed only at the application stage, by which time it can be too late to get adequate revisions. As the proposals evolve, the appointed heritage expert would be able to test it periodically against that initial statement of significance. Once the project was fully devised, the statement of impact could be written. Assuming that it was benign, the accredited expert could sign-off the project as not causing unwarranted harm to the special interest or significance, and submit an application for consent. This would ease considerably the demands placed on the local planning authority. Having reviewed the application and, assuming that it did not find any glaring fault in the submission, it could issue the consent (I would never favour self-certification). Of course this still assumes that there would be a conservation officer within the local planning authority to carry out the review, but this proposed process must surely be better, more thorough and quicker than the threadbare arrangements in place today. There is a mountain of detailed work to be done to flesh out the above outline – statutory consultations, for example. Ultimately, all that is being tabled is that if the taxpayer will not fund the essential expertise needed to protect our heritage, the owners are going to have to do it. If there is less on the public-sector side, how do we get more out of the private-sector side? And how do we persuade owners and developers to do it voluntarily? These and other ideas are pressing the pace of debate within our sector. Radical change is being forced on us by default. As a sector, we need to rise to that challenge and take a hold of the issues in order to steer that change towards the better outcomes needed. One thing is for certain, there’s no going back to how things were. The Fifth Cavalry will not arrive on 7 May. Many of you will have your own thoughts about how the current malaise can be addressed. Be in touch. Mike Brown, chair@ihbc.org.uk
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