Change

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In one way or another, most Historic Environment bodies are concerned with managing change. This can be though legal designations, through the planning system, or by working with others to ensure that we pass on what is important so that people in the future can benefit from it too. On the whole there are good systems in place which are meant to ensure that this happens: in practice, however, we know we are losing buildings, gardens, monuments and landscapes, and that other places are suffering from more gradual changes that will ultimately lead to their destruction. The trouble is that most of our knowledge is anecdotal; we don’t have the essential statistics that should be ringing warning bells. We need to understand change in a wider context.

Protection through legislation

Various laws exist to help identify and protect the most important parts of our heritage of archaeological sites, historic buildings and townscapes, but there are many flaws in the legislation that too often mean that the laws are not working. Planning rules are also there to make sure that historic features are treated sensitively when threatened by developments, but all too often the guidance published by the Scottish Executive is not heeded, and places that are important to local people are permanently damaged or destroyed. And when it comes to our best historic gardens and designed landscapes, our wider historic landscapes, and even our iconic battlefields, there is little to protect them from unsustainable change. Scottish Ministers recognise that this needs to be looked into, but will the Scottish Executive take up the challenge and undertake a wide-ranging review of the successes and failures of designations, leading to improvements in the law and how it is applied?

Click HERE for more information about designated historic places and planning matters

Unsustainable developments

We are constantly reassured that ‘sustainable development is at the heart of the work of the Scottish Executive’, but is this commitment being followed through on the ground in relation to the Historic Environment? The 2002 report Passed to the Future seemed to be saying all the right things, but too little has been happening since, and a review of progress is overdue. A wider look at sustainable development initiatives in Scotland, or even in the UK, shows that the Historic Environment barely appears on the agenda, if at all. How can something so important to our quality of life and social and economic well-being be given such a low profile? This imbalance needs to be redressed; the Historic Environment needs to reach its rightful place as part of the mainstream thinking for our sustainable futures.

Click HERE for details of sustainable development and the Historic Environment

The systems aren’t working

Many of the problems we can identify in the Historic Environment shouldn’t be happening. Systems are meant to be in place to ensure that government departments talk to each other, that there is ‘cross-compliance’ between Historic Environment regulations and those of other interests, and that there is sufficient infrastructure to make things happen. None of these things are working as they should, and there has been no clear champion for the Historic Environment to draw attention to this and demand that things are improved. Where things are working well – and there are abundant individual examples of this – all too often only a few people get to hear about it and share the benefits of good ideas. We need to look again at how we all communicate, and to ensure that we have the infrastructure and capacity to enable our systems to work.

Click HERE to look at issues of communication, capacity and systems

NOTE: The issues and viewpoints contained within the HERT web pages have been raised as part of the scoping process, but should not be taken to represent the views of BEFS or its members.