FEBRUARY 1999 Two issues stand out at the moment, both of which featured in SAVE's response to the summer's green paper from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the future of the built environment. The paper's major proposal was the merger of English Heritage and the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. In fact this is already happening in practice, and is something that SAVE advocated when English Heritage was established in 1984. SAVE concentrated instead on two issues that were missing from the paper, but which we believe are essential to the future direction of conservation in Britain. The Value of Conservation Few would argue that conservation has not been very successful in the last twenty or so years. By and large attitudes toward the care of historic buildings have changed dramatically, not least thanks to the efforts of SAVE. Legislation is now more rigorous, and normally effective, and technical expertise improved and more widely implemented. There is a general acceptance the conservation is a "good thing". Therefore, in many respects the conservation of historic buildings is now taken for granted. We notice much of this in our work: there are far fewer dramatic cases of destruction, and less press interest in conservation. There is a perception the battle has been won. Consequently, despite, or rather because of, its success, conservation now enjoys a low press profile. Of course that is not the case, but perhaps there is a need to re-energise conservation. The core objectives will always remain the same: the promotion of correct historic building practices and the prevention of harmful and unnecessary alterations, and decay and neglect. But it may be an opportune moment to re-emphasise the wider benefits of conservation, and its place in wider concerns about the environment. Elsewhere, on the site we have described a new publication that we have been heavily invovled with, Catalytic Conversion. Its objective is to promote the value of conservation to regeneration, housing and sustainable development policy. Conservation must work hard to hammer home the message that conservation is relevant to these issues; indeed, that it should be at the heart of Government policy. In our submission to Chris Smith we explored the same themes, and called for leadership from the Department in promoting this message. More broadly, historic building conservation ought to be more closely identified with a wider concern for our environment; we should start to build bridges with organisations concerned with protecting the natural environment. It is time historic building conservation recognised itself as a part of a holistic concern for our environment. Maintenance The second theme we addressed in our submission was maintenance. This will never be the sexiest of subjects, but it should be one of the cornerstones of conservation policy in this country. Since the war, conservation has been focused on repair, reducing the backlog of repair that sometimes stretches back centuries. The challenge in the future will be to ensure that all those millions of pounds of public and private money is not wasted for want of blocked drains and missing slates. The concept is as simple: prevention is better than cure; crisis prevention is more sustainable than crisis management. SAVE argues that if some of the millings spent each year was diverted to preventative maintenance it will reduce the need to spend huge sums on repairs in years to come. Our inspiration is the Dutch system of Monumentwacht, by which teams of trained "monument watchers" in fully equipped vans make annual inspections and carry out minor repairs to participating buildings. Owner pay 50% of the costs, and the state the other half. The Dutch have recognised that repair grants are not enough to secure the future of an historic building, and in fact almost worthless without a proper maintenance programme, and recipients of repair grants are obliged to join up to Monumentenwacht. SAVE has for some time advocated a similar approach for Britain: a comprehensive system that provides grants for repairs and promotes and encourages proper maintenance. A recent conference at Bath called for a pilot scheme in the city. The idea has also attracted the attention of the Heritage Lottery Fund, which has suggested in its strategic plan it as a possible future Lottery project. George Allan, a member of the SAVE Committee, has been studying the idea for some time. He has been struck by how many schemes in the UK already exist which embrace at least a part of the Monumentenwacht approach. He would be very keen to hear from anyone who would like to get involved with developing the concept in the UK, or anyone who has information on local initiatives already up and running that share the same underlying beliefs. Please contact George at SAVE. See the Contact SAVE page. Buildings at Risk Finally, Buildings at Risk. SAVE has been producing annual buildings at risk reports for ten years, and one off reports for many years before that. Earlier this year we secured funding to enable us to employ a full time officer to develop a computerised database. The idea is the public, for a small fee will be able to get access to the thousand buildings on the database in one of two ways. Those with access to the Internet can get access to the entire database via this Website. Alternatively, people will be able to order extracts tailored individually by location and building type. Deborah Churchill has been working on the project since the summer, and the register will be launched in January. Further details can be found on the Buildings at Risk page. By concentrating, though not exclusively so, on grade II buildings the SAVE register will be complementary to the newly launched English Heritage buildings at risk initiative, which features only grade II* and I buildings. It will also be the only source of information on Welsh buildings at risk. Most importantly it will allow us to hold up to date information on 1,000 buildings, as opposed to perhaps 150 in the past. However, the aims will remain the same: to publicise through photographs and informative text historic buildings in need of repair in order either to force owners to take action themselves or to sell to people who have learnt of the building through SAVE. It's simple and it works. The new register will enable SAVE to make it work for many more buildings each year than ever before.