A year almost to the day after his appointment as Minister of Tourism and Heritage, John Penrose addressed a gathering of heritage sector leaders earlier on 23 May 2011, at the launch of the new English Heritage Corporate Plan and the associated National Heritage Protection Plan.
Chris Catling, in Salon 255, has provided a useful update on comments by Penrose at the launch:
He said Government’s priorities for the heritage were ‘improving the designation system, developing better responses to heritage at risk and stimulating philanthropy’.
The first, he said, was a matter of making sure that the Heritage List for England was as up to date as it could be and is fit for purpose. The second was about developing new tools to ensure that ‘stubborn cases’ of buildings that have been on the Heritage at Risk register for many years are not allowed to continue to deteriorate.
He referred to the current measures — urgent works notices and compulsory purchase — as the ‘nuclear option’, a button that nobody wanted to have to press; what was needed was a graduated series of measures, a combination of sticks and carrots, that could be used to owners to undertake necessary repairs.
On the third issue, he said that some heritage bodies, such as the National Trust, were world class in their ability to raise funds, but that in general there was a sense that the heritage sector lagged behind the rest of the arts sector in securing sponsorship and donations, and he urged those who were good at fundraising to offer help and mentoring to those who needed help.
The Minster also stressed that it was not the Government’s intention to undermine and weaken existing measures for the protection of the historic environment through the Localism Bill, ‘and we have got the message that PPS5 is valued and felt to be successful, and must be protected as we begin to devolve power in planning to local communities’.
