The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Conservation, Places and People

The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APP) on Conservation, Places and People (CPP), which is supported by the IHBC, was set up two years ago as a vehicle within Parliament for championing the conservation and regeneration of the historic environment to help deliver economically, environmentally and socially successful places. Harnessing the passion many people feel about the heritage of their local areas is one of the key objectives of the APPG, which is chaired by James Grundy, Conservative MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester. The APPG is composed of MPs and peers from across Parliament, and all major political parties with an interest in conservation and heritage issues.

The APPG’s inquiry over the last year and a half into the value of heritage has been its first major piece of work. The group received substantial written evidence demonstrating the substantial economic, environmental and social value that heritage delivers.

With input from experts at a series of oral hearings, the APPG has also probed what is holding back efforts to regenerate historic communities and how heritage can dovetail with the UK government’s broader agenda of levelling up so called ‘left-behind’ communities.

The group was told how businesses, particularly those in the creative sectors, are often drawn to historic buildings and neighbourhoods. They are attracted by the cheap rents and flexible floor space that heritage buildings, such as historic factories and warehouses, can offer. A further selling point for these firms is the distinctive character that historic neighbourhoods often possess. The new uses that businesses have found for redundant factories and offices have been a spur for the regeneration of peripheral, formerly commercial and industrial, inner urban areas, the inquiry found. This process is continuing, for example in Liverpool, where the APPG was told that the successful regeneration of the city-centre-fringe Baltic Triangle and Ropewalks areas is spreading out to new neighbourhoods such as the Fabric District and the ‘Ten Streets’.

The distinctive experience such neighbourhoods offer is also a magnet for tourists, the report found. The unique qualities these historic assets offer can help efforts to regenerate areas, such as high streets and town centres hit by changes to shopping habits resulting from the spread of online retail and the pandemic. Heritage should be integral to these regeneration efforts.

Heritage also has a potentially critical role to play in reducing emissions from the UK’s building stock, a key plank of the UK’s commitment to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, the report found. Encouraging the reuse and retrofit of heritage will help avoid the release of the embodied carbon tied up in the materials that have been used to create the built environment, and other construction-related emissions. Attention has recently focused on buildings’ operational emissions, particularly those from heating. However, awareness of the emissions resulting from demolition and redevelopment is growing, perhaps most visibly in the controversy surrounding Marks and Spencer’s planning application to redevelop its flagship Marble Arch store in London’s Oxford Street.

Historic neighbourhoods offer wider environmental benefits too, stemming from the fact that they were usually developed before the widespread take-up of the automobile. Built on tight street patterns, containing a mix of uses such as shops and housing, they are much easier to walk and cycle around than more modern and more spread-out neighbourhoods, which have been planned around the needs of motor transport.

Social value is inherently harder to quantify. However, polling shows that heritage offers a strong source of local pride, helping to entrench the emotional connection people have with the places where they live, work and grow up. Many of us were keenly aware of the recreational value of gardens and outdoor public spaces during the pandemic.

The inquiry heard how restoring and finding new uses for treasured local landmarks can help to bolster a distinct sense of place. These landmarks provide focal points within their local communities, which can provide valuable venues for hosting social projects, such as food banks. For example, the inquiry heard that Leeds’ Edwardian Bramley Baths is once again a hub for local health and well-being for its inner-city community after being threatened with closure by the local authority.

The geographical ubiquity of heritage means that it can be a powerful tool for regenerating left-behind areas. Working with the grain of heritage, rather than following a blank-sheet approach to redevelopment, can create regeneration projects with a strong sense of local character that can help to attract investment. Refurbishment can provide valuable work for the construction sector, particularly smaller firms, which are more likely to take on this kind of project than larger volume builders.

Building on these findings, The Value of Heritage report proposes a series of recommendations to maximise the contribution of heritage to the economy.

These include:

Using the UK’s post-Brexit freedoms to set VAT rates to introduce a targeted harmonisation of the rate for new construction and refurbishment of existing properties, in order to encourage works to instal insulation and low-carbon heating systems in listed buildings.
Establishing a presumption in the planning system against the demolition of buildings.
Targeting levelling-up and regeneration funding to historic areas.
Providing elected mayors and combined authorities with greater control over such funding streams.
Introducing an amnesty for zero-carbon energy efficiency upgrades to some of the oldest and most precious historic buildings.

Finding fresh uses for old buildings can help to modernise and adapt our historic places for the needs of the 21st century, and for new patterns of work and recreation that have emerged in the wake of the pandemic. Rather than forming a barrier to regeneration and economic development, heritage can be a powerful driver for generating activity across the UK and supporting the government’s levelling-up agenda.

See the report at: https://conservationplacespeople.appg.info/resources/CPP-APPF-First-Report---The-Value-of-Heritage-011222.pdf

This article originally appeared as ‘The value of heritage’ in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 174, published in December 2022. It was written by David Blackman, a journalist, who has led in the establishment of the CPP APPG, and continues to support its work, on behalf of its secretariat, the IHBC.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation