The IHBC’s Toolbox now holds our most recent Research Note, which offers market intelligence on the ‘Local Authority Conservation Specialists Jobs Market’ for 2016, and confirms a 6% rise in posts specifying IHBC.
Bob Kindred, IHBC Research co-ordinator and author of this Research Note, writes: ‘This Note concerns itself with the jobs market for conservation specialists in local authorities for 2016. It refers mainly to England, where the data is of a scale sufficient to merit this kind analysis, though I also monitor and record all the Wales & Scotland jobs. Needless to say, as always there is far more raw data gathered than is posted in the report.’
‘And one headline figure to note is the requirement by local planning authorities that it is essential or desirable for applicants to be members of IHBC, which has risen to 71% of those Councils that advertised in 2016 (up from 65% in 2015).’
IHBC Director Seán O’Reilly said: ‘IHBC Research Notes are produced as part of an integrated programme of online support for conservation practitioners and specialists, the IHBC’s ‘Toolbox’.
The Toolbox is being developed to help inform, advise and guide anyone with specialist 
interests in built and historic environment conservation. Already it offers a wide range of basic resources – the ‘tools’ in the toolbox – from primary research and guidance produced by or on behalf of the IHBC, to technical, academic and practice advice supported or endorsed by the institute.’
Key points in the new Research Note include:
- The Institute’s data set now covers about 1723 posts over 19 years since 1998.
- In 2016 posts advertised in England contracted from the previous year after four years of growth in capacity after 2012. It remains to be seen if this is a temporary setback in an era of public sector volatility or part of a longer-term contraction in the public sector.
- The unexpected emergence of an equal number of permanent or impermanent and/or part-time posts in 2014 appears to have been reversed.
- The average median salary advertised for advertised posts in 2016 was £30,892 a rise of 4.9% (offsetting a 3.2% fall in 2015).
- The requirement by local planning authorities that it is essential or desirable for applicants to be members of IHBC continues a rising trend. 71% of Councils specified this in 2016 (up from 65% in 2015). This strongly indicates the strength of the Institute’s brand recognition and the value placed by employers on the professional status and competences of its members.
- Development management advice and appeals continue to dominate job functions with half of all local government jobs identifying this as the key priority role but a slightly greater diversification of workload was also detected regarding increased conservation are management activities but still not as a high priority as we approach the 50th anniversary of the first designations.
- Six or more of IHBC’s ten English Branches had more than eight advertised vacancies during 2016 but only three in total between the North West and Yorkshire, well below the vacancies elsewhere.
- Higher salaries continued to be paid in London and the South East as might be anticipated, but salary levels continue to be depressed in the South West and West Midlands while most other areas hover around the national average.
Visit the IHBC’s Toolbox and read the Research Note
