Amendments to the Historic Environment Scotland Bill (HES), considered by the Scottish Parliament Education & Culture Committee this week, were promoted by the Built Environment Forum Scotland (BEFS) on behalf of its members, and included data gathered by the IHBC’s 2013 survey of Scotland’s local authority conservation services, funded by Historic Scotland.
BEFS continues to highlight opportunities for further discussion and debate, particularly regarding Local Authority staffing and resources for conservation and heritage.
Euan Leitch, BEFS Advocacy & Communications Officer – Historic Environment writes:
The Historic Environment Scotland Bill was published in March 2014 with the purpose of creating a new lead body for Scotland‘s historic environment, Historic Environment Scotland, which will be a Non-Departmental Public Body with the combined functions of Historic Scotland and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). The Bill is being scrutinised by the Education and Culture Committee who put out a call for written evidence in early March, subsequently taking oral evidence in May.
Stage 1
BEFS membership delegated scrutiny of the Bill to a taskforce who submitted written evidence and were represented by our Vice Chair, Dr Simon Gilmour, in giving oral evidence to the committee at Stage 1 of the parliamentary process. BEFS’ HES Bill taskforce sought clarity in four areas:
- The advisory relationship between Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and planning authorities should be explicitly recognised in the Bill, bringing together local knowledge with national oversight
- The collaborative ethos advocated in the Historic Environment Strategy ‘Our Place in Time’ should be reflected more strongly within the Bill
- The operational detail around the delegation of functions relating to Properties in Care will be critical in safeguarding owner interests (whether public or private)
- The inclusion of the definition of ‘historic environment’ (in the Strategy) within the Bill would provide helpful clarity of the term within this enabling legislation
MSPs had received mixed messages over the need to include a definition of ‘historic environment’ in the Bill and Liam McArthur suggested that if it satisfied some stakeholders and did no harm could it not be done. The Cabinet Secretary responded that bills of Parliament should contain only what was absolutely necessary and that there was ‘no point in window dressing’. The Education and Culture Committee’s recommendation was not to include a definition.
BEFS briefed MSPs on the above points prior to a debate of the full Scottish Parliament on 19th June and the quality of the debate was good, focusing on the strategic implications of the Bill rather than constituency concerns as can sometimes be the case. Many of the points raised in our briefing were aired, the strongest being around the relationship between HES and planning authorities and the delegated management of Properties in Care. Stewart Maxwell MSP, Convenor of the Education and Culture Committee, made some particularly welcome comments:
‘We want other MSPs to consider how they can best help to promote Scotland’s historic environment to make sure that its value is fully realised. If, as parliamentarians, we endorse a bill and a strategy that advocate improvement, partnership working and better leadership, it might strengthen our position if we demonstrate those qualities ourselves.’
Stage 2
Subsequent meetings with the Historic Environment Policy Unit of the Scottish Government were constructive and revealed that the Bill would be amended to reflect the collaborative nature of the Strategy and operational details regarding the delegation of functions relating to Properties in Care. The definition of ‘historic environment’ was not on the cards and further defining the relationship between HES and planning authorities in statute a challenge.
The Bill states that ‘HES must provide Scottish Ministers with advice when Ministers require’ and we discussed whether or not local authorities could be put on a similar footing. The legitimate concern was that this could have the unintended consequence of a planning authority disposing of internal expertise with the statutory assurance that it could rely on advice from HES when required. What BEFS members seek is assurance that local authorities maintain their own capacity to manage the historic environment, as well as have the ability to call upon support from HES as needed. We therefore sought the following amendment:
Local authorities must, in exercising their functions in relation to the historic environment, have regard to appropriate information and expert advice.
Neil Bibby MSP, Vice Convenor of the Education and Culture Committee, kindly agreed to put if forward and Liam McArthur MSP also used the information we provided for his amendments addressing the same issue.
The Education & Culture Committee debated sixty two amendments to the HES Bill on 19th August and the Scottish Government’s amendments all passed including those on collaboration and Properties in Care as advocated by BEFS taskforce. The amendment placing a duty on local authorities was withdrawn and Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, final word on the matter was:
The amendment concerns a theme that we keep coming back to. It was raised in Liam McArthur’s amendments, too. The issue is whether the bill respects local authorities’ rights to determine their own resourcing or whether it is going to be used in a way that it was not intended to be used—the intention behind the bill is to establish HES—in order to place on local authorities a burden that they have not asked for.
It was interesting to note Neil Bibby and Fiona Hyslop both using details from the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s ‘scoping’ report on Scotland’s Local Authority Conservation Services for and against this amendment. Liam McArthur and Neil Bibby left it open to be looked at again at Stage 3 of the parliamentary process in November.
The amended HES Bill will now be scrutinised by BEFS taskforce to decide how we proceed on Stage 3 of the Bill’s progress through the Scottish Parliament, hopefully with recommendations on how we handle our continued support for local authorities’ access to heritage expertise.
For more information on BEFS visit http://www.befs.org.uk
For further information on stage 2 of the Historic Environment Scotland Bill visit the Scottish Parliament website
IHBC newsblog on Scotland’s Local Authority Access to Conservaiton Services
