The Institute of Historic Building Conservation, the UK’s professional body for built and historic environment conservations specialists, has welcomed the launch of Scotland’s Historic Environment Strategy (HES), ‘Our place in Time – Historic Environment Strategy for Scotland’, alongside the Historic Environment Scotland Bill.
IHBC President Trefor Thorpe said: ‘We’re delighted to see the launch of Scotland’s new strategy for the management of its built and historic environment, together with the publication of the new Bill. It all marks a critical step forward in the debate around how best to look after our historic and valued places and fabric. It’s a wonderful moment for Scotland, and I look forward to seeing development there, not least as they can play an important role in informing our own similar debates in Wales’.
IHBC Scotland Branch Chair Stuart Eydmann said: ‘Of course this is just the start of a much more complex and challenging ambition: to deliver on the plans identified in the Strategy. In particular for the IHBC in Scotland, we’re looking forward to contributing to how we can shape the ‘mainstreaming’ agenda so it offers additional capacity for hard-pressed local conservation processes and services.’
‘Partnerships are critical to the strategy’s success, including those between clients and services both inside and outside government. No less important to effective outcomes is better education, training and standards across mainstream development practice. And of course effective local regulatory and regeneration processes and capacity all lie at the heart of these cross-cutting agendas.’
‘The IHBC has played a central role in getting plans to this stage – as witnessed not least by our citation in the Strategic Environmental Assessment accompanying the Bill as well as in the Strategy itself – and we’ll continue our strategic and advisory contributions to the evolution and implementation of the plans’.
‘We will also continue to highlight the practical implications of any initiatives, so that practitioners, owners, users and stakeholders all can get the best out of these important developments. In that context connections between policy – such as our Scottish Historic Environment Policy (SHEP) – and practice – including enhanced synergies between public and private sectors – will remain central in our particular ambitions and concerns.’
Built Environment Forum Scotland (BEFS) has also offered the following update attached to its close engagement with government on behalf of the built and historic environment sectors:
The Historic Environment Bill Scotland has been published, along with the new Strategy for Scotland’s Historic Environment ‘Our Place in Time’. The purpose of the Bill is to enable the merger of HS and RCAHMS and creation of a new body Historic Environment Scotland (HES). A taskforce has been established by BEFS to follow the detail of the Bill and at a recent meeting the taskforce agreed to focus on the functions of Historic Environment Scotland (HES).
Other points to note relating to the Bill are as follows:
• Functions are written in broad terms – examples of functions are provided in the explanatory notes to the Bill
• Collections have a distinct prominence within the Bill
• Amendments will be considered if they are deemed to be ‘within scope’ – ie consistent with this purpose of creating HES
• The key change in relation to the advice provided by HES is that it will come directly from HES staff rather than from Ministers
• Future sponsorship arrangements between central Government (HEPU) and HES will ensure strong linkage to HES expertise
• Acquisitions and disposals – there will be no change in arrangements – properties in care remain the statutory responsibility of Ministers
• Conflicts of interest – the policy intention is that the new arrangements are more transparent. The ethos of HES will be more as a partner rather than arbiter
• Concerns have been raised in the past over the impact of HES on rest of sector, particularly if it achieves charitable status. BEFS understands that Ministers, along with charity regulator OSCR are interested in seeing a healthy charitable sector, in line with the collaborative approach advocated by the Historic Environment Strategy.
• The board of HES will be a standard public body board with 10-15 members. Appointments will be regulated under public appointments procedures.
The Scottish Government writes:
You may recall that in summer 2013 we carried out a public consultation on the draft Historic Environment Strategy for Scotland and the Outline Business case for the merger between Historic Scotland and RCAHMS. Since then both the Bill and Strategy teams have been working closely with stakeholders from the historic environment sector and more widely to help shape the final development of the Historic Environment Strategy for Scotland and the Historic Environment Scotland Bill.
The Historic Environment Strategy for Scotland: The new Strategy is a first for Scotland and an exciting move forward to ensure our Historic Environment is cared for, valued and protected in a sustainable way. It sets out a clear direction and vision, detailing how our historic environment will be carefully managed to deliver real and increasing benefits to Scotland’s people. It will also support all parts of the historic environment sector to work collectively to enable the sector to reach its full potential.
The Historic Environment Scotland Bill, to create a new Non Departmental Public Body: Historic Environment Scotland has now been laid before the Scottish Parliament. This Bill will set out the new organisation’s functions and governance as well as changing some existing legislation to facilitate this?
What happens next?
The Strategy
We are now embarking on the process of appointing members to the Overarching and Operational boards to support delivery of the Strategy. Two working groups have already been established to look at specific issues affecting the historic environment (one considering ‘how best to manage the historic environment’ and one looking at ‘heritage tourism’) and we are in the early stages of setting up two additional groups to consider ‘measuring success’ and ‘education and volunteering’. Information about the groups has been included on the website, and will be updated as required.
The Bill
The Bill will now follow due parliamentary process; Bill proposals will be considered and scrutinised by Parliament in a number of stages. The public can follow this process on the Parliament’s website. Subject to the will of Parliament, the new organisation will become fully operational during 2015.
To keep up to date on the Strategy delivery and the Bill process you can access up to date information from the Historic Environment policy unit website via the following link: www.scotland.gov.uk/historicenvironment
