CONTEXT 178 : DECEMBER 2023 15 BUILDINGS IN THE COUNTRYSIDE Stopping the rot The third soluble problem is an old-fashioned approach to buildings at risk: that the problem is not economics, just disrepair; that disrepair must by definition always be the fault of the owner, who has ‘neglected’ the building; that its future usability and viability are not relevant; and that if it were put into repair at the cost of the owner, but without a viable use, the problem would somehow have been ‘solved’; and so the solution is therefore immediately to use the enforcement powers set out in Historic England’s 120-page Stopping the Rot (2023) to enforce repair. This approach has been remarkably ineffective, mainly because in most cases it is a misdiagnosis, and unreasonable. Most owners hate seeing heritage decay; the reason it does is that they have no choice. Historic England research a decade ago showed that the average conservation deficit on a building on its building-at-risk register was £500,000. In clearer language, if you repaired it, you would lose £500,000. Most people can readily identify with not having £500,000 to lose, so aggressively serving notices on owners who do not is not going to happen, because it will not command public (or local authority elected member) support. The aggressive-notice approach to benign owners is thus ineffective, because it does not happen, but it would be lethal if it did. Rescuing buildings at risk takes time. Nobody would take on a building at risk today if the local planning authority would serve notices tomorrow, requiring a long list of expensive works, of its choosing, to be commenced within 28 days. Malign owners Importantly, however, a small minority of owners of buildings at risk are not benign victims of economics: there is a viable conservation solution, but the owner, often a speculator, is rejecting it. We must deal very proactively with these cases, or speculators will outbid repairing purchasers. Unfortunately we are often bad at this, perhaps partly because the misdiagnosis above (that all owners are malign) diverts us from tackling those who really are malign, but mainly because we assume that hard-pressed local conservation or enforcement officers are well-equipped to handle all owners: some property speculators may variously be unpleasant, obtuse, effectively advised or foreign-based. An effective solution would be a small national team (perhaps of semi-retired people, to maximise experience and reduce costs) with extensive viability and litigation experience, which would proactively identify a sample of egregious and winnable cases, with local planning authority help. The team would then assertively pursue these cases to successful outcomes and publicise them widely to discourage others. The scale of this problem can prompt despair, but plenty of people want to help, including private and commercial owners. Many people look at Historic England’s and SAVE’s lists of buildings at risk, but fewer now act on them. If we in the heritage sector focus much more on prevention; if we help the big majority of benign owners by proactively encouraging sensitive re-use proposals; and if we prevent the small minority of malign owners from profiting from being malign; we could probably at least double our success rate. Jonathan Thompson is co-chair of the Heritage Alliance’s Rural Heritage Advocacy Group, and senior heritage adviser at the CLA (Country Land and Business Association). He was previously chief executive of the Architectural Heritage Fund, and before that head of operations at the Landmark Trust. This article may not necessarily reflect the views of these organisations. Agricultural buildings in Shropshire Shropshire: that’s it fixed… A derelict barn in Yorkshire Dales National Park
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