CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 49 service soon opened with our new digital website, which included branch pages that offered a national port of call for local CPD, accessible to users anywhere. The website also enabled wider ‘signposts’ to learning on offer outside the IHBC. The institute’s interdisciplinary conservation practice standards always required members to access diverse, lowcost and high-quality training, and a new website listing of ‘Recognised CPD Providers’ offered a handy route for members to access more, and usually more specialist, training. That webbased recognition of IHBC CPD providers began in the simplest fashion, by building on the existing web page of Useful Links. The online Events Calendar was the next digital resource to shape the Circular, as it collated and posted IHBC and external CPD events, making them accessible to all, encouraging participation, membership and professional integration. The news service, the NewsBlogs, also could profile select events. But it was only in 2016 that we launched a NewsBlog-led national listing of branch events. As that developed into a monthly service, and expanded to include CPD Providers and wider information networks and services, it laid the foundation for the modern CPD Circular. The CPD Circular now integrates all the diverse threads of learning relevant to members and networks within a single resource, with free, open and regular UK-wide digital CPD listings from a service that is cost-effective for us and accessible to anyone. It is the result of a suite of service threads tied to a long evolution of initiatives that reflected the specific needs of our interdisciplinary membership and moments in our history. If that tight summary history shows how difficult it is to devise a listicle of achievements as ‘events’, disentangling threads across our training and accreditation services is more fraught still. Beginning with our annual schools (another ACO legacy), our membership assessment, accreditation and application support has an interconnected history that merits an issue of Context in its own right, not just a partial passing take from a Director’s Cut. That history could start formally with our 1997 constitution, which referenced formal accreditation through specifying Areas of Competence, soon operating popularly as our eight Competences. A remarkable achievement in themselves, the Competences extrapolated international (ICOMOS) conservation specifications into the more holistic practice standards of conservation officers operating primarily in the UK’s planning system. From 2005, the re-cast of the list of Competences into the four Areas of Competence (professional; evaluation; management and intervention) shaped the IHBC’s skills into a generic conservation process represented in our own Conservation Cycle. Intuitively simple, requiring a look-beforeyou-leap approach when changing places, this suite of models and skills continues to underpin IHBC accreditation. Alongside all that, skills modelling for internal regulation, numerous tools and services were added to aid practice and support outcomes, including through transitional governance arrangements under ‘IHBC+’. Some were noted in my previous column, and most are consolidating in ways familiar from our Circular’s history, including the Toolbox, which integrates practice and training, our modern governance under the new Articles, and the IHBC-supported AllParty Parliamentary Group, which encompasses advocacy, policy and legislation. So, rather than a listicle, perhaps we could focus on the common thread underpinning all the achievements listed and more: our members and volunteers? If so, how would we cultivate that historic spirit and added values? First, we must recruit members by offering high-value and credible services, so the cost and benefits of membership must be central. As noted before, members pay less today than when the national office was established, inflation included. So surely for the future we should prioritise low-cost, value-driven membership fees with continually enhanced support and services? As we look to petitions for charter, parliamentary approaches to policy, and ever-more accessible and informed support for members’ practice, we must also ensure that our services remain cost-effective for the users who actually deliver the achievements we all want and need. Seán O’Reilly, director@ihbc.org.uk
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