CLA heritage policy: priorities and achievements

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Why we care about heritage

Almost all CLA members own heritage, listed/scheduled or not.  Collectively, they manage and/or own a quarter to a third of all heritage in England and Wales (and more than half of the up to a million traditional farm buildings, and rural archaeology).  Looking after heritage is therefore a core activity for CLA members.  But it is often a core cost rather than a source of profit:  CLA members collectively are spending well over £1 billion a year on maintaining and managing heritage (vastly more of course than government). 

CLA heritage policy

Most people – and certainly most CLA members – think the heritage of England and Wales is important and should be looked after.  But looking after it is painfully expensive.  The state never has paid much of that cost, and never will. 

The survival of heritage depends (as always) on people being willing to own it and to spend money on it.  In most cases they can realistically only do that if it is economically viable and relevant to the future.  That in turn requires it to be allowed to be used, and to change.  A heritage protection system is essential, but it must work effectively and proportionately and allow properly-managed change.  This is the essence of the CLA's heritage policy.  It is also obvious commonsense.  But while many people sign up to this in principle, the CLA is just about the only organisation actively lobbying on a day-to-day basis for this to happen.

Heritage protection is not working

In practice, much of the time, this is not happening.  The system is complex, and more particularly it assumes that any change to heritage is potentially damaging and needs to be scrutinised by experts.  This might be fine in theory, but in practice, in the under-resourced local authorities which take nearly all the decisions, those experts just aren’t there, and cuts are making this rapidly worse.  Owners are usually dealing with general development management staff who know little about heritage and are hugely overworked.  The result is local authorities not responding at all, or giving inconsistent answers, or demanding disproportionate amounts of information to encourage applicants to give up, or just saying “no”.  The result is uncertainty, inconsistency, delays, and high costs, and – because of a widespread perception that getting consent is impossible – both the abandonment of projects which would have given historic buildings a better future, and an apparent epidemic of unauthorised work. 

The system is not working and needs substantial but constructive change.

CLA achievements in heritage and planning

We have of course not solved all these problems, yet.  But as by far the largest ‘stakeholder group’ of those who look after heritage, the CLA is taking a very proactive role in this debate:

• We work constructively with English Heritage (EH) and Cadw, are formally represented on the main national heritage bodies, and actively work with many heritage organisations, particularly with the Heritage Alliance.  The CLA's Heritage Adviser co-chairs the Heritage Alliance's rural advocacy group, and sits on the Historic Environment Forum, the National Heritage Protection Plan Advisory Board, the Heritage Alliance's planning advocacy group, and the Heritage Gateway Advisory Committee, among others.
• We are, working closely with owner organisations like the Historic Houses Association and the British Property Federation, gradually persuading EH, Cadw, and central and local government to consult owners of heritage (routine consultation of heritage owners and managers, surprisingly, still seems to be seen as a radical idea).
• We are gradually changing the debate’s ‘terms of trade’.  Most people now accept – at least in theory – that heritage protection is not about ‘preserving' everything 'in aspic’.  EH in particular has adopted a “Constructive Conservation” policy which is about “managing change, not just saying “no” to change”, though as yet this policy is by no means always applied in practice.
• We published a major report on heritage protection, the first non-Government report for many years, Averting crisis in heritage, in Summer 2011.  Many of its recommendations are already being implemented, and we (see below) continue to lobby on the others.
• With others we successfully lobbied the Government to publish a new Planning Policy Statement (PPS 5) for heritage in March 2010, subsequently carried forward into the National Planning Policy Framework from March 2012.  After much CLA lobbying on the details, this focuses on Constructive Conservation, ie helps to put into effect the CLA's heritage policy, and is much more proportionate and effective than the policies set out in the previous policy statements PPG 15 and 16.
• More specifically, we have suggested many beneficial changes to detailed EH policy (for example on traditional farm buildings, where EH has radically changed its position and actively advocates sympathetic conversion to new uses, including residential).
• We persuaded the Department for Communities and Local Government to take a much more positive line on the conversion of rural and historic buildings.
• We have made real progress on better regulation in the planning and heritage protection systems, especially working with the Better Regulation Executive, which helped to prompt the 2008 Killian Pretty Review on simplifying the planning application process;  the Government is implementing many of its recommendations, particularly streamlining the information required from planning and listed building consent applicants, a requirement now being incorporated into the current Growth and Infrastructure Bill.
• We have been heavily involved in the 2009- Penfold Review of non-planning obstacles to development and change, sitting on its Sounding Board.  Its Final Report in July 2010 recommended substantial changes which would, if implemented, focus scarce resources much more effectively. The Government accepted the Report and, after further CLA lobbying, published specific proposals for heritage reform in November 2011 (see below).  Many of these have been incorporated into the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, the first substantive new heritage legislation for 23 years.
• With the RTPI and others, we defeated Government proposals in the 2008 Planning Bill to abolish the right of appeal for most listed building consent and planning applications.
• With others we persuaded the Government not to impose empty business rates on listed buildings.
• With the Cut-the-VAT Coalition and the European Landowners’ Organisation, we secured the ability for EU member states to reduce VAT rates on works to domestic property (including heritage), meaning that the UK government could, if it chose, adopt this at any time (see below).
• Lobbying for effective, pragmatic, and proportionate heritage protection in Wales, we have secured improvements to the Wales Assembly Government statement on the historic environment which initially seemed to see owners of heritage as a problem, rather than the solution, and begins to set out a Constructive Conservation policy for Wales.
• Securing, after a long period of lobbying, new sensible English Heritage guidance on marquees and other temporary structures near heritage, consent for which has been almost impossible to obtain.
• Securing, after much lobbying, new guidance on local listing of heritage, encouraging local authorities to do this properly, including consultation of owners.
• Persuading English Heritage to begin to create an evidence base for heritage in late 2012, so that for the first time it should be possible to demonstrate the economic importance of heritage, its huge net profitability for Government, and the threat to those posed by incompetent attacks like the Government's imposition of 20 per cent VAT on listed building alterations earlier in 2012 (which, in the political circumstances of 2012 and the complete absence of any research or evidence, proved impossible to resist).
• Within the CLA, we have a helpful Heritage Working Group of members with an interest in heritage, and this CLA heritage website which includes updated news on all these issues and Frequently Asked Questions.

Current priorities:

There is much, much more to do.  Current key initiatives include:

• Lobbying to ensure that that there is new heritage guidance underpinning the National Planning Policy Framework, and that this underlines and takes forward the much better system set out in PPS5 (see above), and fills in a number of remaining policy gaps.
• Persuading the Government to implement the heritage recommendations of the Penfold Review on the ground. As above a number of changes are already in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, currently in Parliament, but further change is essential if the system is not to collapse.  CLA lobbying will continue until we have achieved a system that actually works (which, in particular, means that it works not just in a theoretical Utopia of plentiful skilled 'conservation officers', but within the limited resources which will actually be available in practice).
• Lobbying English Heritage (EH) to ensure that its ongoing National Heritage Protection Plan and its corporate strategy are founded on Constructive Conservation, and include substantive solutions to the very real problems in the heritage consent system.
• Encouraging EH to develop the vital evidence base for heritage, especially for listed buildings.
• Continuing detailed scrutiny of forthcoming EH guidance (for example on listing, conservation areas, community planning, and parks and gardens) to ensure that it too is effective, efficient, proportionate, and helpful.
• Showing members how they can minimise the VAT they pay on works to heritage.
• Continued lobbying for the EU-permitted lower VAT rate on works to domestic buildings (including heritage) to be applied in the UK by the UK Government, a problem exascerbated by the rise in the standard rate to 20 per cent in January 2011 and the imposition of VAT on alterations to listed buildings from October 2012.
• Current UK climate change mitigation policy for existing (and indeed new) buildings is that almost the only thing which matters is so-called "energy efficiency", and that all other carbon impacts must be ignored.  This is illogical, and leads to numerous and fast-growing malign consequences, for example promoting plastic windows despite their very high carbon impacts (and financial payback periods much longer than their short physical and economic lives).  The CLA is lobbying with others for a fundamental rethink of policy and of the SAP assessments which underlie Energy Performance Certificates, so that they, the Building Regulations, and the Green Deal no longer fail into this trap.

Feedback from CLA members is extremely helpful and welcome on these and other heritage issues.  Please contact:

Jonathan Thompson
Heritage Adviser
Country Land & Business Association
jonathan.thompson@cla.org.uk 

This page last updated January 2013

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