C O N T E X T 1 0 5 : J U LY 2 0 0 8 39 saving Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings. The new Heritage at Risk register extends this winning formula to Grade II buildings, scheduled monuments, archaeology, historic landscapes, parks and gardens, places of worship, conservation areas, battlefields and even designated maritime wrecks, in fact any bit of England’s protected heritage which is deemed to be at risk of loss through decay or damage. For the first phase of the project, English Heritage has added to its knowledge of the country’s 30,687 Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings with an assessment of all 19,711 of the country’s scheduled monuments, all 1,595 of its registered historic parks, gardens and landscapes, all 43 registered battlefields and all 45 of the protected wrecks off our coasts. An assessment has been made on how many of these national treasures are at risk and, most importantly, why. The results are due to be published in July in a summary document and a register. There is a timetable to extend the contents of this register in the coming years. Heritage at Risk 2008 will cover listed buildings, scheduled monuments, landscapes, parks and gardens, battlefields and wrecks at risk; Heritage at Risk 2009will include all of the above plus conservation areas at risk; andHeritage at Risk 2010 will include all of the above plus places of worship at risk. The Heritage at Risk Register will eventually contain details of each individual item at risk once owners have been contacted. Heritage at Risk will also be launched on English Heritage’s website, which will include links to registers of listed buildings at risk kept by some local authorities. We often talk about the gradual erosion of character of conservation areas through loss and incremental change, but we have never been in a position to confirm this. How do we assess if the conservation area designation process and management are actually working and preserving or enhancing the special character? With a figure of about 9,500 conservation areas, how do we know if designation is doing any good? We do not know what the major threats are to conservation areas. Is it too much money or too little money being spent by the property owners? Are the wider housing market pressures responsible for the changes that we are seeing? Has the introduction of conservation area consent in 1990 helped control losses of features and changes to the character carried out under permitted development, as identified in English Historic Towns Forum’s (EHTF) Townscape in Trouble in 1993? Or has the Shimizu decision in 1996 limited this? The intention of this survey is to create much greater understanding of the current state of conservation areas and to enable local authorities, English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund to prioritise their resources for area grant schemes more effectively. English Heritage has been looking at the issues surrounding changes to conservation areas since 2004. Our previous study on erosion of character in conservation areas was carried out byThe Conservation Studio and described in Context 89, May 2005. This very useful research showed us one way of measuring character change, although it also demonstrated that building-by-building assessment wouldbe very expensive and time-consuming to roll out nationwide. Testing the results against a rapid visit to the surveyed conservation areas by an experienced historic environment specialist, we concluded that the latter approach could produce as reasonably accurate a result of an area’s condition and the threats it faced as a detailed survey. With limited time and budget, our intention is to develop an evidence base for the condition of all the conservation areas in England.We will do this by asking the historic environment and built conservation lead in every local planning authority (lower tier or unitary authority) to complete a brief questionnaire for each conservation area within their jurisdiction. Our pilot work has demonstrated that no more than five minutes per questionnaire should be sufficient to give a high degree of accuracy. For an authority with the average number of conservation areas (30) the whole exercise should take about two and a half hours. We will be reporting the results of the initial survey in July 2009. In future years we intend to update the results and develop an understanding of trends. We also expect to be able to identify the principal issues of concern, such as the loss of features or permitted development works that erode character of conservation areas, and compare them with the same issues tackled in the survey carried out by EHTF ahead of Townscape in Trouble in 1993. In mid-July you should have received by post and email invitations to log on to our website and look for the link to take you to the site where you can download the form. Your familiar contacts in English Heritage regional offices will be contacting you to ask for your assistance in undertaking this survey, and to answer any questions. A polling and research company will run the survey on our behalf. We would like all authorities to have completed the survey by mid-autumn, with a deadline of 31 October 2008. It will take the consultants until the new year to compile their report. One of the main aims will be to identify evidence of loss of character, which will feed into the review of conservation area legislation as part of the Heritage Protection Bill. This will enable issues, mostly around Shimizu, to be addressed by careful wording of the new conservation area controls. We hope to produce headline themes to feature in the Heritage at Risk launch in July 2009, and to review our programme for taking this part of Heritage at Risk forward. We would like to get 100 per cent coverage but realise that there are authorities with limited conservation advice, provided by consultants, where the knowledge of the conservation areas is limited. We see the long-term benefits of this survey of conservation areas as enabling both English Heritage and each local planning authority to monitor the condition of conservation areas, and to identify patterns of change in condition or character and appearance. CharlesWagner is head of planning and regeneration policy at English Heritage.
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