The IHBC has registered its disappointment over the content and scope of the recently published Good Practice Advice (GPA) Note 2, on ‘Managing significance… in the historic environment’, noting in particular its failure to effectively represent core statutory duties to consider historic and architectural values, and with the IHBC responding by confirming its further development of guidance that reflects the needs, priorities and ambitions of the sector.
IHBC Chair Mike Brown said: ‘The failure of GPA 2 to examine key heritage management priorities in legislation – not least ‘historic’ and ‘architectural’ values cited in statute – means that its content cannot be considered as a balanced representation of the scope suggested by GPA 2’s current title.’
‘GPA 2’s imbalance is particularly critical for practitioners today because of the pressures that continue to bear down on local government conservation and planning services. More informed advisers would understand that the document exists largely within its own specialist archaeological niche, outside the hierarchy of government policy. However less well informed users – such as those early in their careers, or managers with limited knowledge of the skills required for heritage management and practice – are in danger of assuming that its contents reflect the wider statutory and non-statutory management operations suggested in its title.’
‘Users can of course take some comfort in the introductory caveats GPA 2 carries to qualify its content, relevance and application. It says that GPA 2 ‘does not… constitute a statement of Government policy,’ and ‘alternative approaches may be equally acceptable’.
‘However those qualifications do little to help make life easier for busy practitioners, and they are not helped either by the curious provenance of this advice. The body that wrote it, English Heritage, split days after its publication, and the brand it currently carries has no special locus in such policy matters today, while the collective for which this note was drafted, the Historic Environment Forum, has not formally signed off on its approval of the content.’
‘Given these concerns, the IHBC can confirm that we will substantially extend our own guidance on policy and practice standards, some of which, hopefully, will be more universally welcomed by the members of the Historic Environment Forum.’
GPA 2 and links to other documents
For more on the IHBC see www.ihbc.org.uk
