The Heritage Alliance has released a statement responding to the recent Treasury’s Statement of Intent, Fixing the Foundations: The Government’s Productivity Plan (highlighting issues of particular concern to the historic environment), and are also seeking your evidence to assist in forming a response to the comprehensive spending review, by 21 August.
The Heritage Alliance (THA) writes:
The Heritage Alliance welcomes HM Treasury’s Statement of Intent, Fixing the Foundations: The Government’s Productivity Plan, as a means of addressing the housing shortage in the UK. The Alliance has long supported the Government’s campaign to streamline the planning system while conserving our heritage in order to maximise its economic, environmental and social returns.
The Plan proposes changes to the wider planning system, but we limit our comments to its potential implications for the historic environment and those who care for it.
Our general concerns are:
- The Plan has a presumption that planning is a barrier to development and that reducing the level of planning controls will directly increase productivity, but it does not cover supporting local planning authorities to make them more efficient and thus able to make sound decisions in a timely fashion. In our view good planning is, and has long been, a necessary precondition for increasing productivity through helping deliver attractive places where people want to live and work. In addition, businesses that depend upon Britain’s built and natural heritage, including our highly productive tourism and creative industries, as well as the heritage industry itself, require a planning system that can effectively manage and conserve heritage from harmful change.
- The Plan makes little reference to capacity and expertise in Local Planning Authorities to manage the planning system, and in particular the historic environment, efficiently and effectively to create better places.
- There needs to be secure funding for Historic England to perform its national role of advising and helping local planning authorities with heritage expertise.
- There is little discussion of safeguards for the environment, the historic environment in particular, or the importance of existing legislation for either designated or undesignated heritage assets on development sites and simplified planning areas like brownfield sites.
- The trend towards a Zonal System for Brownfield Land which militates against mixed uses or sustainable development, fails to recognise and protect its archaeological interest, does not understand or make use of the environment in the area, and reduces control over the quality of design.
- There is no reference to sustainable development in the Plan, though the presumption in favour of sustainable development is the ‘golden thread’ running through the National Planning Policy Framework.
View the full THA response to Fixing the Foundations (including specific responses to historic environment safeguarding, Local Authority spending, borwnfield land zoning, design and placemaking and community engagement) on THA’s website
And find out how to help the THA Comprehensive Spending Review response on THA’s website
