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Power of Place - Heritage Policy at the Start of the New Millennium
Kate Clark
ABSTRACT
In 2000 the (then) English Heritage was asked to lead on a review of policies relating to the historic environment in England. Rather than simply draft something in isolation, English Heritage launched a wide-ranging and inclusive engagement process involving the private sector, natural and cultural heritage organisations, faith groups and many others supported by a MORI survey of peoples’ attitudes to the historic environment and the value they placed on it.
The resulting document, Power of Place – the future of the historic environment, anticipated many issues that have subsequently become mainstream elements of policy and practice including conservation-led regeneration, tackling heritage at risk, reviewing public parks and publishing regular state of the historic environment reports. Other recommendations still remain challenging in policy terms – including encouraging better maintenance, promoting craft skills, putting heritage at the heart of education, understanding what people value and why, enabling more participation, managing change, making the regulatory system work better and supporting local leaders.
This article simply sets out to raise awareness of that initiative, as a contribution to the history of heritage policyin England.
Introduction
In the late 1990s a group of people working in heritage in England set out to revolutionise our understanding of heritage and the way it was talked about and cared for. Perhaps like every generation of heritage practitioners before and since, they were chafing at what they saw as the limitations of the then language, policy and legislation. They were frustrated by the narrow constraints of designation, enmeshed in concepts of place rather than dots on maps, excited by the philosophy of sustainable development, and beginning to get to grips with the wider social, environmental and economic dimensions to heritage. Many had worked with the strong voluntary sector in the UK and so recognised that different people had different perceptions of heritage, and that what could be achieved within a public sector organisation related to only a tiny part of what most people saw as their heritage. The disciplinary boundaries between archaeology and buildings, or landscapes and built heritage, nature and culture were also breaking down.
The opportunity came in 2000 when the then Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) wrote to English Heritage asking for a major review of policies for heritage, following the sixth report from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee Session 1998–99 on DCMS and its quangos.1
Although that review raised some important and powerful ideas about heritage, it was to some extent overtaken by proposals to reform designation that culminated in the draft 2008 heritage bill. As a result, many of the policy implications of the review were never fully worked through.
Protecting Our Heritage
Less than four years before DCMS and DTLR wrote to English Heritage, the Department of National Heritage (DNH) published a ‘green’ (or consultation) paper entitled ‘Protecting our Heritage: A consultation document on the built heritage of England and Wales’.2
The core issues raised in the green paper are reflected in the cover design which juxtaposed two buildings – the Grade1 listed Willis Corroon buildings (1973–5) and Tintern Abbey – a monument in guardianship in Wales. The purpose of the consultation was to address some of the controversy that had arisen over the listing of inter- and post-war buildings .3 The consultation proposed that more modern buildings from the 1950s and beyond should be listed on a different basis to older buildings. Although there were other proposals relating to the operation of the legislation, the primary focus was on designation – the identification of heritage for protection.
The context for Protecting our Heritage was that the management of the historic environment was not seen as problematic – the rate of loss of historic buildings had dramatically slowed, the financial support available for heritage was growing and the launch of the National Lottery had created new opportunities to support heritage assets such as urban parks, as well as additional support for voluntary groups – but there were concerns about the way the system of protection worked.
Power of Place
By January 2000 heritage policy was in a very different place. The Department of National Heritage had been renamed the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the government had embarked on a series of ambitious reviews to look at the problems of poor neighbourhoods, one of which was PAT 10 (Policy Action Plan 10) which examined the role of arts and museums and social inclusion.4 Following the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the sustainable development agenda was building up, recognising the links between diversity, quality of life, and the need to integrate development and conservation – thinking that was beginning to find its way from the natural environment into cultural heritage practice and the government had published its own sustainable development strategy.5
English Heritage was the arms-length ‘quango’ (quasi-autonomous non-government organisation) set up in 1983 to take on heritage functions previously done by government departments including designation, providing grants, advice, policy and casework, as well as the ‘guardianship’ of properties in the care of the state. In 1991 an internal re-organisation of the side of English Heritage that dealt with heritage in the land-use planning system had broken down the professional silos that divided architects, planners, historic buildings professionals and archaeologists, who were now working together in multi-disciplinary regional or place-based teams.
From a policy perspective, English Heritage was beginning to mirror some of the language and approaches of sustainable development and the environmental movement. The most notable change was that the organisation was starting to take a more place-based approach to heritage, seeing it as ‘historic environment’ rather than a series of individual sites and monuments, reflected in the principal policy document covering heritage in the land-use planning system – Planning Policy Guidance 15: Planning and the Historic Environment. Linked to this, there was a new emphasis on understanding patterns of loss through the surveys of first buildings at risk and later monuments at risk. And in a move that signalled a much closer link between economic policy and heritage conservation, English Heritage was positioning itself very much as a regeneration agency.6 The table at Appendix One sets out a list of contemporary policy topics in 2000.
It was against this background of internal and external policy thinking that the Department for Culture Media and Sport and the Department for Transport, Environment and the Regions commissioned a review of policies for the historic environment. The fact that the review was commissioned across two government departments signalled a recognition of the relevance of heritage/the historic environment to wider economic and environmental policy agendas.
In respons...
