Key users IHBC AND RTPI see mostly problems in England’s new draft policy for
historic places.
The IHBC has submitted a downbeat joint response with the RTPI to the Communities and Local Government (CLG) consultation document on the draft Planning Policy Statement 15 (PPS 15)consultation on Planning and the Historic Environment. The IHBC-RTPI joint response says that ‘without significant and substantial changes in the PPS, (IHBC and RTPI)consider that the document will not be fit for purpose’.
Together, the two key professional bodies suggest that the PPS marks a significant step backwards from current policy, which values historic places as economic and environmental resources as well as cultural assets. Four key threats are identified in the draft PPS:
•reducing protection;
•complicating the system;
•adding costs and uncertainty, and, through its outdated presumptions about built heritage;
•marginalising the sector by not capitalising on its potential.
The IHBC and RTPI represent a collective membership of some 24000 specialist professionals working in planning and conservation of the historic and built environment across the UK, and together probably represent the most substantial specialist interest in the future planning of historic places.
IHBC Director, Seán O’Reilly, said: “We remain fully committed to the principles of Heritage Protection Reform – simplification, fairness, openness and real policy support for the holistic benefits historic places bring in terms of economic, social and environmental benefits. Clearly, the current draft fails on almost all counts, presenting our historic places as a museum of the past rather than a resource for the future: accessible, environmentally friendly, and full of economic potential!
Martin Willey, President, Royal Town Planning Institute, said: This could prove to be a charter for people who want to knock buildings down because it is the cheapest option for them. The biggest problem with this new guidance is that it assumes that heritage stands in the way of development and economic recovery, which is patently untrue. Historic buildings and places are an asset not a burden.
The joint response, fully ‘badged’ by both parties, raises fundamental concerns over the extent to which the PPS could undermine the infrastructure for managing historic places for sustainable development, a key aspiration for the document. IHBC Director, Dr O’Reilly, continued: The IHBC and RTPI led the professional support for the legislation that would have provided the bedrock of a new PPS, securing an unparalleled support for reform from 1/4 million professional memberships across the UK’s built environment sector. We always anticipated challenges in agreeing detailed policy, but even we are surprised at the extent to which so many other respondents, as well as ourselves, have identified fundamental problems with the draft, and the potential of the current proposals actually to work against sustainable development.
There is extensive support for the position of these two bodies from wider professional interests. The Chartered Institute for Building (CIOB), adopting a new approach to policy response, has written in on behalf of its 40,000 members, ‘supporting the detailed and thought provoking consultation response produced by the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’ and RTPI, and calling for ‘the final drafting (to) take into consideration the recommendations and amendments made in the IHBC response’. RICS, though more sanguine about the operational impacts, also raises concerns in this area, while the RIBA is registering serious concerns with the potential negative impacts of the current draft. All bodies previously registered joint support for the principles of reforming the system, but none see those aspirations met within the current draft.
O’Reilly concluded: The only support we see is from those heritage interests desperately seeking some last gasp to be wrung from the years invested in much-needed reform, if only to save face for the sector; or from disillusioned users seeing any change as being better than the status quo – a position that we fully understand. We also imagine there are a few less scrupulous interests supporting the PPS for the huge opportunities they see in it to blast through the infrastructure of the current protection and management systems.
Our web site reviews a selection of responses, and not one we’ve seen says that the draft is close to being operational. Given the distance between the draft and its aspirations, at the very least I think CLG should hold a second consultation on a substantial re-draft. That would establish the kind of dialogue with the sector that the PPS is supposed to presage rather than, as the draft now does, undermine.
However with the Tories now apparently committed to progressing modernisation though a related new Bill, the pressure to rush through any old policy is now off. With time in hand, and an unparalleled level of concern with what we are given over what was promised, the IHBC will now consider writing to the relevant Parliamentary Committees asking them to scrutinise the forward progress of the draft. We’ve put too much into this process to allow it to go wrong, and Committee scrutiny may be the only way to make sure that we get what we’ve worked for.
Link to IHBC-RTPI response to PPS 15 consultation
Link to IHBC cover letter to PPS 15 consultation
Link to CIOB response to PPS 15 consultation
Link to article
