Heritage protection for the 21st Century
'Heritage Protection for the 21st Century’ is a Government White Paper produced by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Welsh Assembly. It is the product of a number of years of thought and consultation on the system of protection for heritage assets in England and Wales, which began with the review of policies relating to the Historic Environment in 1999 which resulted in the English Heritage produced document ‘Power of Place’ in 2000 and was followed by the DCMS/ODPM response ‘The Historic Environment: A Force for Our Future ‘in 2001. Amongst the many suggestions within this was a review of the way in which the nations’ heritage is protected, which led to the Heritage Protection Review. The current White Paper is the result of the deliberations contained within the Heritage Protection Review.
The White Paper addresses a proposed new system of heritage protection in England, a new parallel system for Wales, and specific proposals for the management of the nation’s Maritime heritage.
It is based on the core principles of developing a more unified approach to the historic environment, providing an inclusive and accessible system of designation and control, putting the historic environment at the heart of an effective planning system and facilitating local management of the historic environment. Containing much that was trailed in consultation drafts – a unified system of designation, a more transparent and simpler consent system focused on local authorities, the introduction of Heritage Protection Agreements to better manage and streamline consent procedures on large or complex sites - the White Paper also introduces some welcome proposals: interim protection for buildings under consideration of listing; extending protection to items on local lists; and the potential merging of Conservation Area Consent with Planning Permission as a route to restoring pre-Shimizu levels of protection to buildings within Conservation Areas.
Parliamentary time is being sought in the next year to take this forward to a ‘Heritage Bill’. In the more immediate future, the White Paper contains three consultation questions. Responses to the questions were requested for1st June 2007.
The consultation questions
Question 1
Should Conservation Area Consent be removed as a specific consent and merged with Planning Permission? The merger would be combined with amendments to the Demolition Direction to ensure planning permission would be required for the demolition of an unlisted building in a Conservation Area and amendments to the General Permitted Development Order to re-instate levels of protection pre-Shimizu.
Question 2
As a means of promoting early consideration of heritage issues in large scale developments, should there be new statutory guidance promoting pre-application assessment and discussion for all major planning applications which may affect historic assets?
Question 3
As a means of providing greater certainty to developers, should the current operation of Certificates of Immunity be expanded to enable an application to be made at any time, and for a site as well as individual building?
Heritage Protection for the 21st Century (632KB)
