Editorial: April 2003

English Heritage

There have been some odd decisions made recently by English Heritage which one would not normally expect, judged against its usual standards for applying policy and common sense. This gives serious cause for concern: EH would seem to be under undue pressure from a higher authority.

First is the EH Commission’s apparent acceptance of the 217 metre, 53 storey Minerva Tower in London against the strong advice of EH officers and its London Advisory Committee. The result was a letter in which only the mildest objection was made to the proposals and which will almost certainly be ignored by the Corporation of London (‘we consider aspects of the proposal would damage the setting of the Tower of London’ was about the strongest sentence in their letter to the Corporation). To briefly recap, the problem with this colossal building is that it will allow the gradual infilling of space in the sky behind the Tower of London, a World Heritage Site when viewed from the south. If there is no protection for the setting of the WHS, then what hope for a humble Grade II listed building, as enshrined in legistlation.

There is a serious need for proper consistency in EH’s approach to tall buildings. Its stance at the Heron inquiry and forthcoming London Bridge Inquiry looked strong and unassailable. In the case of Minerva, however, they appear to have chosen a fancy design over location, ignoring their own ‘Guidance on Tall Buildings’ launched in March this year and discussed below. The fear of losing another public inquiry might have been in their minds, but the result of this prevaricating approach could be to undermine any position they take against all tall building proposals. A further worry on this front is that they have shown a willingness in the discussion of Mayor Livingston’s London Plan to give away up to 2/3rds of the view corridors of St. Paul’s Cathedral in strategic views.

A similarly counterproductive, if not downright bizarre approach is being taken by EH in the case of the Governor’s Garden at Berwick-Upon-Tweed. Here, as reported in the last newsletter, the local authority in trying to do the right thing, has produced a sensible development brief for a site in the centre of this wonderful historic town. In response to an application which would exceed all the limitations of the development brief, EH has given thumbs up, couching its language so as to disguise the way in which the development would break the rules. (They stated that the height and bulk of the application was fine as ‘45% of the bulk of the scheme respects the maximum height restriction in the brief [for the site] and a further 30% is only one storey above it’. In other words, they are giving the nod to an application which is way over the limits set by the local authority.)

SAVE hopes that these and the other few strange decisions are not to become the norm, although the recent musings of the Head of Urban Strategies and Listings at EH, quoted extensively in Building Design, do very little to assuage our fears. These were along the lines of dropping current listed building protection in cases involving large developments in favour of individual agreements with developers as to how specific historic buildings can be developed – the net result of such a move is likely to be a series of increasingly complex precedents which will weaken the level of protection, making any system impossible to enforce and giving lawyers a field day.

As we have pointed out so vigorously in Northern Ireland over the last two years, there is no point in having a system if you cannot or simply don’t enforce it. There is therefore a latent danger that local authorities that try to do the right thing for historic buildings on their patch could end up without any support from EH.

It is therefore essential that during the forthcoming review of the designations system EH’s own agenda is not allowed to dominate the valid concerns of the rest of the heritage world. One of the questions we expect to see asked by DCMS in this review is whether more powers over listed buildings should be delegated to local authorities. This comes at a time when EH has just launched a report highlighting the dreadful shortages in staff and funding faced by local authorities.

Our fear is that EH might turn into a benign spectator once again - commenting on applications that affect historic buildings rather than acting on them – as a result of pressure from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which is forcing EH to ‘modernise’. In return, EH may be coaxed with a little more funding from Government, as opposed to the ongoing scandalous decrease in its funding. A high price to pay: EH was established with increased powers and more money than the HBC. There is a real danger of turning back the clock and not tackling the problems facing the historic environment with firmness, conviction and funding.

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