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By Dr James Weir, technical director (heritage), tor&co, and beforehand senior conservation officer at Dorset Council
(UK heritage coverage goals to establish, shield, and handle websites and objects of historic, architectural, and archaeological significance by means of authorized designations like listed buildings and scheduled monuments throughout the planning system)
When the federal government talks about ‘heritage blockers’ holding again construct, child, construct, it offers voice to a frustration many builders and their consultants recognise all too nicely. Pre-app recommendation is delayed and imprecise. Officers and committees beat across the heritage bush. Purposes wade by means of treacle or grind to a halt.
However can this actually be mounted by coverage tweaks alone? A standard alarm is to bemoan the erosion of specialist historic atmosphere experience inside native planning authorities. Certainly, current Historic England knowledge reveals there are actually fewer than 800 full-time equal heritage specialists throughout English councils, with simply over 500 targeted on conservation roles. This continues a long-term decline which has seen conservation and archaeology employees drop by round a 3rd because the mid-2000s. Historic England itself reviews rising caseloads per officer, at the same time as authorities seeks to scale back session thresholds. This capability failure is actual – but it surely doesn’t clarify why decision-making is so usually defensive even the place experience exists.
I might recommend it isn’t. The problem arises from two sides of the identical coin.
In my expertise, together with inside an area authority, planning officers too usually lack the arrogance to use the planning stability pragmatically. Objections from heritage consultees are handled as one thing to be overcome, even when they’re weakly grounded in coverage or might be outweighed by different materials issues, which is how planning is supposed to work.
The opposite facet of the coin is the calibre of heritage consultee enter. The place consultee enter is pushed by protectionist intuition slightly than dispassionate, policy-based evaluation, merely including extra of it is not going to enhance the standard or velocity of decision-making. My very own expertise has led me to conclude that, particularly on main schemes, public sector heritage our bodies are much more more likely to overcook heritage points than candidates are to undercook it. Too usually, ideology trumps calculated evaluation.
A functioning system depends on skilled professionals, each inside and outdoors native planning authorities, with the ability to say with confidence the place the road sits in rational, debatable phrases. In a dysfunctional system, the place concern of change outweighs rational evaluation, heritage turns into a proxy for uncertainty: officers defer choices, committees react, and reasoning thins.
What subsequent?
Planning reform is not going to change this image. New NPPF insurance policies, altered session thresholds or modifications to statutory consultees, just like the Gardens Belief, is not going to, in themselves, shift how heritage recommendation is framed or acquired. The reply lies not merely in padding out native authorities with extra heritage specialists, which can compound the difficulty, however at the start in coaching case officers to know and apply the planning stability with confidence; to problem views of consultees the place they diverge considerably from skilled submissions, not simply vice versa; and to have the wherewithal to argue opposite views to committees in non-deferential phrases.
A much less rarefied ambiance for heritage specialists would additionally assist, with coaching and steerage from skilled our bodies and Historic England stressing the necessity for a optimistic angle to facilitating change, to not concern it.
How builders ought to adapt
The error is to deal with heritage as a last-minute, regulatory hurdle. In actuality it’s one primarily based on cautious evaluation and much more cautious argument. The best schemes are already adapting in 5 clear methods.
1. Bringing heritage ahead: Early, scheme-shaping heritage evaluation offers heritage consultants a method path, offers officers confidence and reduces delays.
2. Specializing in significance (together with contributory setting): Clear, intelligible assessments anchored immovably on impacts to recognized features of significance strengthens the bottom for advocacy.
3. Participating consultants who will advocate: As an alternative of only a report-provider, on this local weather a advisor should be a continuing and sturdy advocate in opposition to unreasonable LPA/consultee positions.
4. Strengthening the stability with public advantages: Specializing in heritage advantages slightly than harms anchors schemes in a strong, debatable place.
5. Planning for attraction resilience: Resilience isn’t in making each concession to heritage officers or consultees, however in making certain that the assessment-base is dispassionate and clearly evidenced.
A ultimate reframing
Builders who recognise this and reply accordingly will transfer quicker, not slower, no matter nationwide coverage modifications. Approached confidently and strategically, the instruments to push again on resistance and safe consent are readily at hand.
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