The Heritage Alliance has issued briefing on the English Devolution White Paper, which has been supported through our Planning and Devolution Bills working group, and shared with government.
THA writes:
… The Heritage Alliance welcomes the proposals in the White Paper. If designed and implemented well, they will increase the power of heritage to drive growth, regenerate towns and countryside and to strengthen communities.
There are many models for delivering heritage services through local government, and any can be made to work well given sufficient resources, expertise and influence. But realising the full regenerative potential of heritage has been hampered by lack of clarity about the respective roles of central government and complex tiers of local government, the withdrawal of resources, and the loss of expertise, influence and confidence. The radical proposals in the White Paper create an opportunity to maximise the power of heritage to help government deliver its growth and housing policies. The Heritage Alliance is optimistic that we could have a future where:
- heritage is recognised as an enabler, not a blocker, of growth
- central, strategic and local governments’ perception of the value of heritage extends beyond tourism and the DCMS portfolio (a limitation of the White Paper’s ambition) into housing and Spatial Development Strategies, economic development and regeneration, environment and climate change and community health and wellbeing
- accurate, up-to-date and timely data allow heritage to start adding value to growth and development at the design stage, and to reduce the risks of poor information or insufficient research causing unexpected but foreseeable heritage issues to delay social and economic benefit
- a community’s future is enriched by its past, fostering shared identities and values
- an improved and increasing housing stock works with the grain of the landscape, reflects local traditions and provides homes that are valued by local communities because they are distinctive and have local character, rather than being imposed, off- the-shelf anywhere towns and everywhere homes
- older properties are made more carbon efficient through sympathetic change, avoiding inappropriate retrofit that saves little carbon and shortens the life of a home
- social and human capital is grown, by securing social value programmes during design, build and occupation
- skills, resources, strategies and policies mean that decision making is timely, confident and in most cases driven by ‘yes, if…’, not ‘no, because’.
Against that optimistic background, the Heritage Alliance has identified some potential hazards if reforms were to be poorly thought through or badly implemented. The scenario to avoid is a disruptive change programme that leaves local authority services in a different pattern, but
- as under-resourced as now (or worse)
- with insufficient expertise, staff and influence to play their part in delivering the growth agenda
- acting as a drag on housebuilding
- unable to prevent the loss of heritage that is valued by individuals and local communities and which could have been put to productive use…
See the LGA ‘Factual briefing’ (2024)
See more on the Planning and Devolution Bill
