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cultural value and (past) cultural heritage
was perhaps an inevitable consequence of the
emphasis from the outset (in the selection
criteria for listing) on architectural rather
than historic interest and thus on design
value as well as fabric. The statutory lists
now represent each nation’s collection of
architecture to which it attaches sufficient
cultural value to wish to pass it on to future
generations as part of their heritage. The
incremental shift could not have been
achieved without public support. Listing only
began to be effective in protecting buildings
during the late 1960s as public opinion moved
against comprehensive redevelopment,
a turning point being the introduction of
conservation areas in 1967.
European Architectural Heritage
Year (1975), a Council of Europe initiative,
was a catalyst for thinking about how
historic buildings, valued not only for
their recollection of the past but also, and
perhaps principally, for their contribution
to the present and future, could be
sustained in use. International statements
of best professional practice, particularly
The Venice Charter (1964), were still
concerned primarily with monuments
whose exceptional significance was evident
at national, and often international, level
and where ongoing use was desirable, but
not essential, to survival. The Council of
Europe Convention on the Protection of the
Architectural Heritage (Granada, 1985) took
a wider view. In the UK, pragmatic guidance
became annexed to successive planning
policy documents and supplemented by
advice from national heritage agencies.
The idea of ‘conservation planning’ was
pioneered by James Semple Kerr in Australia
and underpinned (with The Venice Charter)
The Burra Charter, which was adopted by
ICOMOS Australia in 1979. While The Venice
Charter and its precursors prescribed what
was necessary to protect a relatively narrow
range of heritage values, The Burra Charter set
out a process for identifying the values people
attach to places as the basis of managing
change in ways that seek to retain ‘all aspects
of [their] cultural significance’. The heritage
values of places were seen as often both
multiple and mutable. Heritage practitioners
therefore needed to become advocates and
enablers as well as conservators, particularly
in relation to the values attached to places by
the communities that identify with them. The
European Framework Convention on the Value
of Cultural Heritage for Society (Faro, 2005; yet
to be ratified by the UK) now places heritage
in this wider political and social context.
Often promoted as a democratisation
of heritage, addressing values beyond those
of an expert elite, Kerr’s work soon began
to be referenced by practitioners in England
and the ‘conservation planning’ approach
was taken up by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The idea is a simple one: understand the
range of values that people attach to a place
and seek to manage the place to sustain as
many of those values as reasonably possible.
This idea, as well as established English
conservation practice and public policy,
provided the background to the drafting of
English Heritage’s Conservation Principles,
Policies and Guidance for the Sustainable
Management of the Historic Environment
(2008). This document attempted to
domesticate the concepts of conservation
planning and a values-based system of
assessment, promoting an integrated
approach to managing any and all valued
elements of the historic environment.
The scope of designation and recognition
of historic buildings and areas has widened
to include those significant for their design
or associations, rather than simply their age,
and which are sustained by remaining in use.
In parallel, there has been a de facto (but
not universal) acceptance that ‘minimum
intervention’ does not, of itself, necessarily
provide an adequate response to the range of
conservation issues faced by practitioners or
regulatory authorities. This wider concept of
heritage demands discrimination and a sense
of proportion, to inform attempts to identify
and balance conflicting public interests
(the essential concern of public policy) in a
methodical and transparent way.
Evolving policy
Public policy and professional practice have
inevitably responded to changing concerns
more rapidly than underlying legislation,
complicating an integrated approach to
managing cultural heritage values in the
historic environment. In England, a draft
heritage protection bill was published in 2008,
but not taken forward, leaving integrated
policy (Planning Policy Statement 5: Planning
for the Historic Environment, 2010) informed
by the ideas in the Conservation Principles
but disconnected from the details and
terminology of underlying legislation. At the
time of writing, a high level National Planning
Policy Framework seems likely to replace
topic-based Planning Policy Statements,
including PPS5. This is intended to leave good
practice to be established through standards
and guidance produced by professional
bodies and organisations. More weight might
then be attached to the revision, recently
announced, of the British Standard (BS) Guide
to the principles of the conservation of historic
buildings (BS 7913:1998).
The Welsh Assembly Government has
published its own Conservation Principles for
the Sustainable Management of The Historic
Environment in Wales (2011), adapting the
English version, and has announced its
intention of bringing forward a Heritage
(Wales) Bill. Scotland has high level policies
applicable to all heritage assets,² including
reference to conservation planning, but
grounded in existing legislation, to which
some amendments have been made.³ Policy in
Northern Ireland still follows a similar format
to the recently-superseded English PPG15.⁴
Key concepts in current
policy and guidance
Significance
is the starting point: it is the
reason why, from a heritage perspective, the
future of a place may be a matter of public
interest. English Heritage’s Conservation
Principles defines it as ‘the sum of the cultural
and natural heritage values of a place, often set
out in a statement of significance’. Breaking
this down, a value is ‘an aspect of worth
or importance, here attached by people to
qualities of places’. They are grouped under
four broad headings, not intended as a
checklist, but as a prompt to thought:
• evidential, deriving from the
potential of a place to yield evidence
about past human activity
• historical, deriving from the ways
in which past people, events and
aspects of life can be connected
through a place to the present
• aesthetic, deriving from the ways
in which people draw sensory and
intellectual stimulation from a place
• communal, deriving from the meanings
of a place for the people who relate
to it, or for whom it figures in their
collective experience or memory.
English public policy in PPS5 adopts a similar
definition of significance, ‘the value of a
heritage asset to this and future generations
because of its heritage interest’, but limits
it by the qualification ‘that interest may
be archaeological, architectural, artistic
or historic’. This is the sum of the types
of ‘interest’ included in the underlying
legislation.⁵ If one reads ‘archaeological’ for
‘evidential’, and accepts that architectural and
artistic values fit within the broader concept
of aesthetic values in the Conservation
Principles, the main difference lies in the
absence of the idea of communal values,
although arguably they can be understood as a
subset of historical values.
‘Significance’ can be considered as broadly
equating, in terms of the Planning (Listed
Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990,
with ‘interest’, as in ‘special architectural
or historic interest’, but in an integrated
approach to managing values, its scope
tends to be wider, inclusive rather than
specific. Works of alteration or extension
for which listed building consent is required
are those ‘which would affect its character
as a building of special architectural or
historic interest’. In this context, ‘character’
(meaning ‘distinctive nature, distinguishing
quality or qualities’) might be considered
as the attributes that carry or express
that special interest or significance.
Changing values:
Once considered controversial, many
post-war listings are now cultural icons: Leonard C Howitt’s
1957 Hollings Building, Manchester, which was listed Grade II
in 1998, now adorns a coffee cup.
(Photo: www.peoplewillalwaysneedplates.co.uk)