Today saw the launch of the new look English
Heritage and Historic England, born from the forced severance of the old
English Heritage organisation. Until now the historic environment in England has
been largely the legal responsibility of one organisation; English Heritage. Established
in 1983, it was the natural successor to the old Department of Works,
responsible for the care of over 420 historic properties in public hands. However,
it has been an uneven and, in the view of many, a restrictive role that saw the
one organisation have two very distinct and separate hydra like heads. On the
one hand English Heritage were responsible for the maintenance and care of the
many hundreds of historic buildings that litter our towns and countryside like
so much historic confetti; everything from medieval monasteries and castles to
iconic World Heritage Sites such as Stonehenge and large parts of Hadrian's
Wall. They were responsible for the visitor experience, the retail outlets and
the overflow car park on busy bank holiday weekends. However, on the other hand
the same organisation was also responsible for implementing and enforcing
current planning legislation in respect of the historic environment; offering
advice and comment on everything from Scheduled Ancient Monuments to how the
erection of an illuminated shop sign might impact upon the setting of a Listed
Building. The two heads of the hydra were not seen by many as entirely obvious,
or comfortable, bedfellows.
Well, the uneven marriage has finally ended in divorce. From
the 1st of April (no irony apparently intended) English Heritage is to be
split into two. The care of the historic properties will now be run by a
charitable trust, still to be known as English Heritage, into which the
government will invest about £80 million
for immediate repairs and consolidation. This is the new body that will
be responsible for the historic houses and castles we visit, the interpretation
of our heritage on the frontline and, of course, the gift-shops full of
pencils, rubbers and shiny branded notebooks so beloved of visiting school
parties. The rest of the responsibilities held by the old organisation,
including most aspects of planning, advice and heritage protection are to be
vested in a new body to be known as Historic England. This new body, according
to Culture Secretary Sajid Javid speaking at the official launch of the
organisation, will remain part of the government's responsibility and they
intend to keep "its functions
close at hand."
So it appears that all is glowing and rosy in the world of
heritage protection. However, looks can be deceiving. Is this, as Sajid Javid
insists, simply the adapting of an old organisation "to suit the age in
which we now live", or is it one of the final stages in something more
fundamental; the systematic dismantling of all forms of environmental and
heritage protection that has taken place over the last five years? Given the
evidence it is difficult to conclude that it is anything other than the latter.
When the Tory party came to power five years ago one of
their key ambitions, much promoted within business communities and elsewhere,
was the doing away with 'red tape'. They were going to be a friend to business,
remove the perceived 'brakes on development' and allow us to build our way out
of recession. However, it soon became clear that their perception of what
constituted red tape was anything that might slow down or hamper development.
Anything that caused delay or expense to developers was their enemy and it had
to go - and go it did.
The first to go was planning legislation. Seen as complex
and restrictive, over 1500 pages of planning law was reduced to a single
document of a little over 50 pages in length. The National Planning Policy
Framework (NPPF) was to give a clean slate to the planning process and a green
light to developers. Guidelines and well crafted legislation, that often left
little or no room for ambiguity, and had been developed over a period of more
than half a century, was thrown out of the window in favour of a document that
contained more gray areas, ambiguities and contradictions in its fifty odd
pages than the average Dr Who script.
The next 'brake on development' targeted by the government
were those bodies who actually had their legal responsibilities for ensuring
the protection of our heritage and environment. These included the Environment
Agency, Natural England and English Heritage, all of whom suffered swingeing
cuts to their funding and resulted in job losses. In the case of the
Environment Agency the government went even further, appointing Sir Phillip
Dilley, a noted planning and development specialist, as the new chairman. The
cuts had the intended effect, leaving the agencies stretched and able to
undertake only the barest minimum of their legal duties. There were reported
cases of agency officers being unable to undertake site visits for even major
developments due to budget constraints, preferring to rely upon viewing the
site on Google Earth.
In the case of protection for the historic environment cuts
within English Heritage caused a pervasive culture of fear. Individual officers
relate stories of being told by their superiors not to intervene in planning
issues that had already become 'live' (plans that had essentially already been
approved by local authorities) for fear that they would be seen as further stifling
development and bringing further cuts in their direction. This change in
attitudes was soon picked up upon by planning officers within local
authorities. When dealing with applications that might be considered
controversial, it became a matter of policy rather than oversight within
certain 'rogue' councils not to consult with English Heritage until after the
application had been initially passed by their own development committees;
thereby effectively ruling out possible interference from English Heritage
until such point as their hands were already tied.
The final levels of heritage protection beneath English
Heritage, the county based 'Historic Environment Services' (HES) who are
directly responsible for offering archaeological advice upon planning applications,
was actually even easier for the government to undermine. General cuts to local
authority budgets has led to the need for cost savings on a massive scale, and
sadly it has been the county Historic Environment Services that have found
themselves in the front line. Services have been reduced, posts have been lost
and workloads increased. In recent weeks one county council (West Sussex) has
stated that it is actually completely ceasing to offer archaeological planning
advice to most of the local authority planning departments in their area,
leaving them to make their own arrangements with external contractors, whilst
another (Northamptonshire) has stated that it aims to outsource 95% of all of
its services - with no indication whatsoever of who, if anyone, will be
offering archaeological advice to planners.
Having dismantled the mechanisms and agencies whose role was
to protect the historic environment the government continues to attack all
forms of heritage protection. More local governments cuts are being put
forward, the Portable Antiquities scheme is once again under threat and Judicial
Review, the last line of defence against bad and ill informed planning
decisions, is to be made much harder and more expensive to undertake. Whilst
each exercise in 'cutting red tape' seen in isolation may be regarded as simply
removing the occasional brick from the wall of heritage and environmental
protection, the cumulative result has been that the wall now has more holes
than bricks.
The question must be whether, putting aside the destruction
of heritage and environmental protection, the government has actually succeeded
in what they set out to achieve? Have they managed to do away with what they
regarded as the greatest enemy of development, developers and big business?
Have they actually reduced the dreaded 'red tape'? Today the term 'red tape' is
seen in almost wholly negative light, with connotations of overly heavy handed bureaucracy
and top-down policy implementation for the sake of implementation; a political
and media short-hand for restrictive practices and over regulation. However,
it's worth remembering that every piece of this red tape legislation has been
put in place by a former government, many of them Tory, for what was considered
the protection of heritage and the environment. The development of the Green
Belt, over a thousand pages of planning legislation and the Scheduling of
Ancient Monuments were not simply pieces of political whimsy pulled from the
air on after a brief discussion in the House of Commons bar. They were the
result of a perceived and recognised need, extended periods of practical
engagement with the subject and a wish to preserve irreplaceable heritage and
environment assets for generations, rather than just the term of the next
parliament. As any planning officer of whatever political persuasion will now
tell you, the reduction of planning legislation to a little over fifty pages of
the NPPF has not simplified the planning process. It has simply done away with
areas of certainty that did exist in the old legislation, created a mass of
grey areas and directly resulted in the publishing of multiple 'guidelines',
designed to run alongside the NPPF, that are now almost as long as the original
legislation it sought to replace. Planning by legislation and consent is
largely being replaced by planning by litigation; where those who can afford
the bigger barristers carry the day. There is, it would appear, sometimes a
need for red tape.
There are those who believe that we are fiddling whilst Rome
burns; watching generations of heritage protection being dismantled around us
with no coordinated opposition, or potential for the future reversal of some of
the most damaging measures. However, the view from the frontline of heritage
and archaeology in England is that, when we look back on this period in a
decade or two, we will realise that we weren't watching Rome burn at all - we
were already simply playing in the ashes. Heritage protection has been, and
continues to be, dismantled at every turn and with each week and month that
passes. Today, however, the great and the good gathered together in the Chapter
House of Westminster Abbey to celebrate the launch of two new organisations
that, in the words of Sajid Javid, "will be free to explore new ways of engaging with
communities. New ways of protecting and promoting our heritage." Let us
all hope that there is some real truth in Javid's words, and that today's
celebration doesn't turn out to be an expensive wake for a long lost past.
NOTE: Since originally writing this post it has caused some controversy. It has been stated that it is a purely political piece of propaganda. That was never the intention. Whatever my personal political views I do not believe that there is an major party that, at the present time, takes heritage and environmental matters seriously. I would also add that every statement made in the blog above can be backed up with facts and figures. For instance, the Natural England case referred to was that for the development of a 7 acre lorry park (classed as a 'major development' by the planning authority) on designated environmentally sensitive land in the Wensum valley, Norfolk. Natural England did not make a site visit, citing budget constraints, and are on record in the minutes of the Development Committee meeting as saying they relied instead on viewing the site from Google Earth. Local opposition groups offered to pay for either their bus fare or a taxi to visit the site. The offer was not taken up.
In addition, since the publication of this piece the government has issued its formal response to the Commons Select Committees investigation into the first two years running of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The Commons Select Committee was tasked with examining how the NPPF had been operating in practice and what could be done to improve it. The Committee, after much study and deliberation, put forward a list of recommendations, most of which were aimed at clarifying areas of the NPPF that were considered ambiguous and addressing "the growing number of concerns about unsustainable development". The Committee considered that many of these concerns were "significant and need to be tackled".
On the 27th February 2015 the government issued its response to the Committees recommendations - the vast majority of which were completely rejected. The Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, Clive Betts M.P., responded by stating that he was "very disappointed by the Government’s response to my Committee’s recent report... Sadly, the Government’s response shows it is burying its head in the sand about these important public concerns."
