| ISSN 1357-4442 | Editor: Simon Denison |
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| COMMENT |
Let us restore listing's good name
by Richard Morris
The canvass of public opinion on the listing of post-war buildings, announced recently by Stephen Dorrell, Secretary of State for National Heritage, is timely. This is not because the clapometer will necessarily be a good guide to heritage values, but because the mechanisms of stewardship over which Mr Dorrell presides are being questioned, and we should all join the wider debate he now invites.
Listed building control was introduced as a safeguard against cultural vandalism. In the 1950s and 1960s thousands of serviceable historic buildings were squandered, often to make way for tawdry schemes that are themselves now due for the ball and chain. Many of Britain's towns are economically and environmentally poorer as a result.
Today, however, listing is being caricatured as a tyranny. Numerous recent articles and letters in the press have criticised the pettifogging bureaucracy involved in the administration of listed building procedures. Such complaints throw light on the loathing many owners feel for a system they see as secretive and elitist. For them, conservation is an irksome process, visited on unlucky owners by Kafkaesque officialdom.
To explore the dynamics of these frustrations it is useful to consider the philosophy behind our system. This rests on the principle that certain buildings, monuments and sites are of such importance that the public interest in their care should override the liberty of an owner to neglect, mutilate or destroy them. We thus apply controls of considerable stringency to a small selection of our heritage, and leave the rest unprotected.
If we would be civilised, this is hard to gainsay. To an extent, however, our all-or-nothing approach gives a distorted impression of what the heritage actually is, and who is responsible for it. Emphasis is placed on what is nationally outstanding at the expense of what is local and typical. Official endorsement is thus given to a perception of `heritage' as something distanced from routine surroundings, and the job of remote experts rather than local people to cherish.
Mr Dorrell's forthcoming Green Paper will be a welcome opportunity to get to grips with these issues. A useful start might be to nail the idea that conservation is about `setting Britain in aspic'. It is not. Conservation is about intelligent change. Commonly, it is the lack of quality and sensitivity in proposals for changing listed buildings, not the principle of change, which gives affront. Owners who buy listed buildings and then stamp their feet when consent for crass schemes is refused deserve little sympathy.
This is not to say that the system always works flawlessly. Negative perceptions are reinforced when planners with no specialist knowledge operate controls as mechanistic routines rather than with insight. But this is mainly because good conservation staff are too few, and usually too junior, to meet the demands made of them. Local authorities need much more encouragement to strengthen their expertise. Relative to the more-than-£20 billion generated each year by tourism, this would be a small investment bringing long-term benefits.
Next, the Green Paper should remind us that conservation is about archaeological integrity, not simply about appearances. Preoccupation with façades and frontages belongs to the two-dimensional world of the film-set. Buildings are the sum of their functions and evolutions, and that should be the starting point for their care.
Following from this, Mr Dorrell would be right to challenge us to explain what we value, and why. Too many of conservation's working assumptions derive from a small community which relies on the power of the system to give them effect. This is not to say that the assumptions are wrong - simply that the onus is on us to put them across with greater clarity, and to debate them openly rather than retreat into assertions.
The greatest challenge facing us all is to find ways of promoting public engagement with local surroundings. The historic environment is today's environment, and listing should be a mark of progress, not a brake upon it. But the cherishing of the myriad features that make up the rich texture of local distinctiveness will ultimately be achieved through popular understanding, not through control.
Richard Morris is Director of the CBA
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