quantities of heritage had resulted in growing public awareness of heritage issues and chat some of the gaps in the Government's approach to the problem were being filled by the interested public. The eventual consequence, therefore, of inadequate legislative control and financial support for conservation is a self-sustaining private conservation movement in which the enlightened public maintain their own historic properties. The task remaining for English Heritage in this scenario is to target the limited public funds available for conservation into those areas where private means are not yet available. le is within this context that the new Conservation Area Partnership schemes are being introduced. CAPs represent an attempt at a more focused identification of which areas really 'need' financial support. Such schemes will incorporate mechanisms for the measurement of achievement. Through targeting particularly needy areas, English Heritage hopes to reinforce local authorities in the front line with larger amounts of more flexible funding. In this wider context the partnership is not therefore just between English Heritage and local authorities but also encompasses central government. Weight will be lent to this partnership, in Mrs Sharman's opinion, by the recognition of the increasing professional competence of Conservation Officers in Institute status. Further it is for Conservation Officers to cake che initiative in drawing up a check list of legislative improvements required for the more satisfactory protection of conservation areas. English Heritage will then be able to act as a conduit between central government at the core and che local government Conservation Officer at the periphery of the process of policy making. Only through such a partnership will conservation benefit from the inevitable conflict between the former's desire for deregulation and the latter's desire for more effective control mechanisms. CONSERVATION AREA DESIGNATION The School called upon the resources and experience of Conservation Officers themselves in the presentation of three case studies of conservation area designation. Stephen Bateman, Head of Conservation at Bradford, described che history of conservation area designation in Bradford since che first in 1971. Early designations tended to be made in a negative manner as development control cools; by the mid 1980s there was a growing reluctance to confer conservation area status, but in the 1990s conservation areas were back in fashion. Bradford now CONTEXT 43 has 55 conservation areas in a city with a population of 470,000. The cask of writing character assessments for these is daunting and, as in so many other authorities, a somewhat unrealistic goal given current staffing levels. Bateman raised questions as to the ideal length and detail of assessments and suggested chat, in order to complete the project, the documents would have to so shore as to be worthless. GordonAtkinson, Conservation Officer for Beverley Borough Council, gave an enthusiastic account of conservation area designation in his district. A predominantly rural area, in contrast to the first case study, Beverley Borough has a population of 115,000, 800 listed buildings, 14 conservation areas and a Conservation Officer with no budget. In 1991 Atkinson began a borough-wide review of conservation areas. With considerable distances to cover, an initial period of research in the archives proved an invaluable way of targeting his efforts to best effect. Enclosure and estate maps, together with early editions of the Ordnance Survey, provided the information on which to base more detailed site-based assessments of potentially interesting settlements. The use of maps encouraged the balanced assessment of the village within its landscape of fields, footpaths, roads ecc, and in some cases the survival of historic field paccerns proved more interesting than the villages themselves. This intensely structured approach to the review process made the exercise comprehensive and exhaustive. 21 places were selected as potential new conservation areas, 15 incorporating areas of historic landscape importance. Designation will, of course, depend on public consultation, but Atkinson is more confident than in che past chat the right areas are under consideration and that only those areas worthy of conservation area status will achieve it. The final presentation in this section was, in effect, an introduction to the potential for conservatton area designation in the context of canals. James Clifton of British Waterways surprised most delegates with che information chat British Waterways is second only to the Church of England in the number of listed buildings it owns (2,000). Mose of the nation's canals are of lace 18th or early 19th century origin and are a Third White ClothHall, Leeds(1775-76), restoredand converted(1992) byJohn Lyallfor SpecialityShopspie. 19
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