C O N T E X T 1 1 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 0 3 ‘significance’ (which in turn is founded on ‘interest’), it is clear that substantial duty is placed on the expert practitioner to make an informed and balanced judgement to identify a ‘heritage asset’. The new use of the term ‘significance’ is intended to be linked to the existing terms used in the 1990 Act, such as ‘special architectural and historic interest’ and also ‘archaeological interest’, which was established by PPG16.While the intention is that all policies cover all assets, in practice, and until and indeed if, any further legislation is enacted, the legislative regime governing each remains distinct. In order for applications to be validated, the significance of heritage assets has to be identified and assessed to a proportionate level.This may be seen as a formalisation of a conceptual process of assessment often used in practice.This proportionate approach to significance chimes very well with much current practice in building conservation. The PPS contains a number of terms which would appear to be likely sources of future debate and discussion as to their extent and definition, and which are not defined in the terminology annex.The introduction of such terms without definition is unfortunate. Let us hope that further clarity can be brought to this. For example, where does ‘substantial harm’ exceed ‘less harm’ or indeed become ‘less than substantial harm’? The level of harm is seen by the government to be a judgment to be made by local planning authorities. Indeed, a basic definition of each level of harm could be established at this early stage by the planning authority to ensure a more robust response to being put on the spot later in appeals and inquiries. Planning policies only The removal of all policies considered to not be direct planning policies has reduced the word count and, it can be argued, the value of the document to specialist conservation professionals, as opposed to wider planners.Thus the relationship of the historic environment to other areas of control and grant regimes (such as building regulations, dangerous buildings, disabled access, house renovation grants, ecclesiastical exemption, advertisement control, and highways and public realm) have all been removed in many cases, not only losing valuable statements of priority over other legislation, but unlikely to be picked up by other PPSs. Perhaps this is where the government’s high-level statement may need to come into its own. A number of other planning-related areas have also been excluded from the PPS.While many may notionally relate to other PPSs, they do not in the main have any specific concentration on the historic environment aspects. As a result the emphasis has been lost for areas such as enforcement and prosecution, and establishing fixtures and curtilage (in the light of the existing legislation pre-empting any possible new legislative framework). It is of course one aspect of the raft of planning policy and should be read as such with all other planning policy, particularly PPS1. PPS5 is not the exclusive reference for the historic environment policy. Rather, as the opening paragraphs of PPS5 make clear, reference should and must be made to others PPSs by users of PPS5, depending on circumstances and need. In this sense, perhaps more than any other, PPS5 represents the integration of historic environment policy with wider planning policy. In this way too, it responds to the IHBC’s firm commitment to integrating specialist historic environment practice with the wider planning system.The document is emphatic that it does not undermine the wide conservation values that the IHBC works to support.This is in stark contrast with the first draft of PPS15. It is no longer possible to hope that all the answers will be found by reference to a single document. But how do we balance other government policy against the value of the historic environment if it is not explicit in this document? Presumption in favour The welcome reinstatement of a presumption in favour of preservation, now termed conservation (policy 9.1), which was to be lost in the previous draft of PPS15, is now thus expanded under the PPS to be relevant to all designated heritage assets rather than the PPS15 presumption in relation to listed buildings.This brings registered scheduled monuments, registered parks and gardens,World Heritage Sites and battlefields within this policy. A finite resource The acknowledgement that our heritage is finite has been reintroduced and a much-improved acceptance of the wider benefits of heritage is described in the section on the government’s objectives.The headline policies on climate change accept the inherent sustainability of historic buildings and do not see heritage entirely as an impediment to climate change mitigation. Enabling development PPG15 contained no advice on ‘enabling development’.The PPG did not appear to support the concept in general: paragraph 1.3 on sustainable development points up the risk of ‘sacrificing what future generations will value for the sake of short-term and often illusory gains’ and the sections on use and alterations (3.8 to 3.15) did not mention it.The new enabling development policy (11.1) is based very tightly on English Heritage’s existing policy. It requires a series of tests to be applied to applications to enable local planning authorities to weigh up
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