1.  THE COUNCIL FOR BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGY (CBA)

  Founded in 1944, the CBA is an educational charity which works to promote the study and care of Britain's historic environment, to provide a forum for archaeological opinion, and to improve public interest in and knowledge of Britain's past. The Council has an institutional membership of 485 local, regional and national societies, museums, universities, and archaeological bodies, an individual membership of 4,500, and a Young Archaeologists' Club of some 2,200 children and schools. The CBA is also a network, with 11 regional branches in England, CBA Wales, and a counterpart in Scotland, the Council for Scottish Archaeology.

  1.1  This memorandum has been prepared by senior staff, in consultation with the Council's Honorary Officers, members of our Executive, and Committee Chairs.

  1.2  Archaeology is more than digging. From its inception, the CBA has had a strong concern for all aspects of the historic environment, from the beginnings of Britain's human life some half a million years ago to the 20th century. This concern is exercised through publications, both popular and scholarly; a magazine, British Archaeology; campaigns; casework and participation in relevant public inquiries; conferences; educational projects; grants schemes; and an information service which last year handled some 6,000 enquiries from the public.

  1.3  By tradition the CBA has been a pioneering, opinion-forming body. Industrial archaeology (from the 1950s), the concept of historic town designations (1960s), archaeology in local government, and the integration of archaeology with the care of churches and secular buildings (1970s and 80s) all owe much to the CBA's influence. The CBA has also been in the vanguard of those who have argued for an inclusive approach to heritage which values what is local, typical and characteristic as much as that which is exceptional, rare or outstanding. With a perspective that spans more than half a century, and being the only heritage body that embraces both the public and private sectors, the CBA is well placed to contribute to this inquiry.

  1.4  The historic environment is the contemporary environment in which we all live and work. It enriches daily life. It is an educational resource, a cultural and economic asset. As the Commitee knows, Britain's cultural tourist industry is worth billions. The historic environment is also irreplaceable; archaeological sites, landscapes and historic buildings do not regenerate. Good stewardship is thus a long-term business, calling for effective partnership between national and local structures and stability in centres of expertise which it would be neither practical nor economic to maintain in other ways.

  1.5  Successful stewardship also calls for public involvement, not as spectators or bystanders who are told by experts what they can or cannot touch, or what is interesting and what not, but as active participants in the study and cherishing of local surroundings. The existence of the Heritage Lottery Fund, with its underlying aims of fostering popular access and participation, is thus strongly welcomed. We ask that what follows be read in that context.

2.  PROVISION FOR THE CARE AND UNDERSTANDING OF BRITAIN'S HERITAGE

  The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) cannot and should not be considered apart from the wider context within which it operates. In parallel, at national level, stand English Heritage (a non-executive agency, with a statutory remit) and its near-equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ("near", because these are executive agencies). These bodies have roles which embrace conservation policy, strategy and grants, archaeology and the built environment. They also manage national monuments, and have a significant educational remit. Beside them (but not in Northern Ireland) stand the Royal Commissions for historical monuments in England, Scotland and Wales (hereafter RCHME, RCAHMS and RCAHMW, respectively13[15]. Established by Royal Warrant, their task is survey, aerial reconnaissance, record and interpretation, and in particular the maintenance of the National Monuments Records—databases of the historic environment. There are other bodies with less direct but significant roles, most obviously the Countryside Commission. In terms of grant-giving, the HLF well exceeds the annual capacity of all of these put together.

  2.1  At local level, but in Britain not yet universally, there are services devoted to the provision of archaeological and other conservation advice within the planning system and for purposes of public advice and explanation. These are mainly based in local government, often at county level (where counties still exist), but also now sometimes in unitary, district or borough authorities14[16]. Common to almost all of them is the Sites and Monuments Record (SMR); a historic environmental database for the area concerned. The importance of the SMRs cannot be exaggerated; the information they contain is needed to inform planning decisions, guide interpretative and conservation strategies, and for purposes of education, comprehension and local involvement. It needs to be recognised that SMRs are not simply computerised lists; the information they hold requires mediation (for contextual or explanatory purposes) which in turn calls for continuity of knowledge of the area concerned. More than this, SMRs must be dynamic, organic institutions, to be constantly updated and revised in the light of new information and understanding.

  2.2  The national conservation agencies rely heavily on local government provision, to which many front-line conservation responsibilities have been devolved (cf PPGs 15 and 16). At a time when expectations and demands are rising, not only in relation to the planning process but also (and, in the present context, most relevantly) in connection with public explanation, advice, community involvement and projects, it is a matter of concern that local government resourcing is generally falling. The range, quality and continuity of local government heritage provision is suffering disproportionately.

  2.3  There is a community of interest amongst the CBA, HLF, national agencies, Royal Commissions and local services in seeking to conserve, record, comprehend and promote understanding and enjoyment of the historic environment. Equally, despite desirable overlap on public explanation, each of these bodies has a distinct primary role. Hence, while we welcome the advent of the HLF, we are concerned at evidence of avoidable confusion and overlap at both strategic and tactical levels.

  2.4  We welcome the HLF because of its unparalleled capacity to make financial input to the aims of conservation, comprehension and enjoyment mentioned above, and because its arrival has forced a timely review of principle and objectives which puts strong emphasis on direct public benefit. Our anxiety stems from evidence that the confusion derives from more than teething troubles, and that the efforts to address it are consuming resources of several organisations that would be better spent on their primary tasks rather than administrative turf wars.

3.  STRATEGIC ISSUES

  The main strategic problem goes back to the establishment of the HLF. The CBA recalls the guarantee offered publicly by the former Prime Minister at an English Heritage conference that Lottery funding would be an extra, and not a substitute, for existing public resources devoted to historical conservation at national and local levels. It is cynical, and a particularly cynical inversion of "additionality", for the previous and present governments to explain cuts to English Heritage and Royal Commission direct funding, and to local government overall funding, as something different.

  3.1  The result of these cuts is the weakening, reduction and fragmentation of the infrastructure which historical conservation needs in order to inform, help crystallise, monitor, and derive best-long-term-value from the one-off capital grants which are the essence of HLF delivery. The HLF must also enforce rules of additionality for its new Revenue Grants Scheme, so this cannot compensate for services, normally local government-based, which have either never got off the ground for lack of resources or have recently been cut.

  3.2  Conserving a sustainable historic environment is a long-term task which requires stable local and national organisations that embody adequate critical masses of expertise and information systems serving clear objectives. How and why the satisfaction of this requirement is becoming increasingly difficult may be beyond the scope of the Committee's inquiry, but the effects are not, because the resources at the disposal of the HLF are so relatively vast. The position of museums, County Record Offices, local SMRs and archaeological and historic building services, is particularly fragile. Undoubted and accumulating assets, they are also non-statutory and vulnerable to cuts visited upon "soft" environmental services. Such reductions have disproportionately large effects because they squander years of public investment by destroying continuity of knowledge and scattering skills which cannot be reassembled. HLF bidders need such services to inform and guide their projects, yet we are reaching—in some areas, have reached—a position where resources available for permanently accessible basic services have vanished, while large resources for atomistic short-term projects remain available. This is irrational, and harmful to the heritage.

  3.3  Welcome as it is, therefore, the very scale of the HLF's capacity is skewing a systematic approach to the structural/strategic and long-term local problems by concentrating what is now the vast bulk of an otherwise shrinking set of grants budgets on large ad hoc customer-led initiatives. It is also forcing the HLF to create a substantial independent policy structure of its own in parallel with those of the existing major players, rather than a structure which dovetails into and further helps develop an existing shared set of means and ends. Nationally, we ought to have a situation in which the agencies and Royal Commissions are adequately resourced to lead on conservation and information provision, respectively, while the HLF works broadly within those frameworks while also acting as the conscience of public benefit. We would argue that what is actually happening is that national bodies are on occasion expending considerable effort in dressing up under-resourced "core" activities to look "non-core" in Lottery bids of their own, with consequent distortion and illogicalities that create inbuilt problems if the bid is successful. Parallels to this phenomenon can be found at local level.

  3.4  In the absence of a clear, well-adjusted framework within which the HLF can work, this will get worse, with reductions in the funding available to the HLF and a continuing increase in demand leading to fairly arbitrary decisions between otherwise acceptable applications, perhaps based more upon national distribution or political considerations rather than conservation need. This would matter less if the grants budgets and means of delivery for the other bodies, especially local government, had not been drastically reduced. For example, while the HLF's recent prioritisation of public benefit aspects of SMRs is entirely welcome in the abstract, it will achieve little if the revenue-based infrastructure of SMRs continues to buckle under the stresses of development control work and reductions of local government funding.

  3.5  The corollary of such examples is dispiriting: those local services which remain in reasonable health, and some of the national conservation agencies themselves, are better placed to make successful bids to the HLF than others who are arguably more deserving. In result, we have a climate in which the minority strong remain able to grow stronger, while those most in need of reinforcement or encouragement are going to the wall.

  3.6  This closes a circle, for the HLF was never intended to sustain or reinforce conservation infrastructure at all. We agree with the principle that it should not, but in a climate which incongruously manages to combine feast and famine it must be a question for how long it will be possible or reasonable to sustain the principle of public responsibility for necessary services when de facto the HLF's presence has inadvertently begun to dilute and confuse it. Given the choice between an imaginative but short-term project for the enhancement of local ponds, and ensuring the stability and quality, or even survival, of local conservation services, one would surely back the latter.

  3.7  For reasons given, such difficulties and imbalances are not the fault of the HLF or its Trustees, but rather the result of a strategic vacuum environment in which the HLF operates. For this, in our judgement, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and its Ministers, bear most responsibility. Neither they nor those who advise them appear to have accepted that local conservation services are almost everywhere under unreasonable pressure, that in some areas they are in crisis and in others non-existent, and that in result the conditions in which HLF funds can be fruitfully and evenly applied are badly compromised. The public leadership one would expect on these issues, at least to the extent of admitting they exist, has not been noticeable. In result, Ministers appear unaware of the scale or complexity of the problems and have shown no inclination to address them. In some instances they may actually be compounding them by themselves entertaining the HLF as a source of funding for projects which arguably belong with Government and the taxpayer.

 4.   TACTICAL ISSUES

  We have knowledge, both direct[17]15 and through the experience of some member organisations, of HLF bidding. We have found the HLF's staff to be consistently helpful and courteous in what is clearly a complex and onerous task. Our following comments are thus made with the conviction that the HLF's officers have been doing their best in the face of difficult external circumstances and demands which are not always possible to forecast. Historically, the frugality of the HLF's administration, in one sense admirable, may have contributed to an impression held both by ourselves and others that the Fund's own secretariat has been under-resourced and over-burdened, with a consequent tendency to "lose the place" on particular cases. More recently this has changed much for the better, although the advent of new arrangements for Revenue Grants, and the funding of archaeological and educational projects (all thoroughly welcome) might introduce fresh pressures.

  4.1  Our further comments fall under five heads:

i.  The HLF, for reasons that lie outside its own control, has been consistently inconsistent in the way that it carries out its business. It has "moved the goal posts" over the kind of project, the areas within which projects may fall, and the kind of funding that can be expected. It has, in the experience of some, failed to keep potential applicants fully aware of these changes, with the consequence that time has been wasted on both sides. For reasons given above (4) this may be a criticism of the past.

ii.  The bidding process is taxing. Understandably, but paralysingly, the HLF insists on covering itself against every possible eventuality in terms of the legal and financial conditions of any grant. This leads to greater expenditure than necessary on the part of bidders (in legal, accounting and other consultants' fees). This must deter many good applications, and it can divert effort and time from an organisation's ordinary programmes. This may restrict the accessibility of the Fund.

iii.  Many successful bids are, clearly, of high quality. Some are equally clearly not so, and the external observer is left with a sense of inconsistency about a process which leads to a set of products where excellence and whimsicality are randomly mingled.

iv.  Instances are arising, largely for the strategic reasons outlined in section 3, of sometimes massive projects emerging without due regard for how they should relate to existing arrangements. An example is the Local Heritage Initiative, which was launched with an exhortation to create local information systems and, apparently, only dim awareness of the network of local Sites and Monuments Records which already exists, or indeed the impact of HLI projects upon them. Significantly, the main progenitor of the HLI is the Countryside Commission, which stands outside the main circle of heritage agencies.

v.  The present rules appear to deter educational establishments from bidding. This may be to discourage bids from large numbers of schools, but universities should be encouraged. Standing as they do at the centres of communities and regions, universities are well placed to develop work with the community, and could act as umbrella organisations to co-ordinate work across a region which links a number of smaller projects together.

5.  SUMMARY

  5.1  We welcome the advent of the HLF and support its aims of encouraging public access and participation. We particularly welcome the Fund's recently-acquired capability to support archaeological and educational projects.

  5.2  Conservation and comprehension of the historic environment are long-term, continuing tasks which require stable local and national organisations that embody adequate critical masses of expertise and information systems serving clear objectives. We do not believe these conditions are being generally met.

  5.3  The HLF is operating against a background in which essential local, and to an extent national, heritage services are year-on-year being expected to do more with less. Locally, the result is attenuation and fragmentation of the infrastructure which historical conservation needs, both for primary heritage management purposes and to derive best value from HLF-funded projects.

  5.4  As things stand the HLF is powerless to intervene in those areas where reinforcement is arguably most needed. The reasons for that inability are understood, and the underlying principle which dictates it strikes us correct. However, the principle itself is now being jeopardised by disjunctions between stated intention and actuality.

  5.5  We believe that the difficulties and imbalances we have outlined flow ultimately from a Government policy on the historic environment which is inadequately focused. We see little evidence that the Government understands this, or the interconnectedness of the problems and issues which flow from it.

July 1998

16   14 In Wales, the principal SMRs are positioned in four independent archaeological trusts. It is a matter of concern that local government coverage for archaeology in Scotland remains incomplete. Back

17   15 The CBA is the recipient of a grant from the HLF for The Defence of Britain, a project which enlists public participation to contribute records to a database of Britain's 20th century defensive remains. Back