Organisations responsible for urban regeneration in Leicester, we believe, are not giving sufficient regard to historic buildings. In Conservation Areas developers push extremely hard to either demolish or over-develop both listed and quality unlisted buildings. This pressure becomes extremely difficult for local authorities to resist.

  We believe that it is vital that, before regeneration takes place, there is a thorough, professional survey of potential redevelopment areas to identify significant historic buildings parallel to the archaeological surveys required in PPG 16. We believe that Local Authorities do not at present have the resources to do this.

  Leicester is one of those urban areas that never received a resurvey of its historic buildings stock in the 1970/80s period under the Michael Heseltine review. This means that there are numerous buildings and areas of historic and architectural importance that have not been fully researched. It is precisely these areas (five of them in Leicester) that are currently undergoing substantial redevelopment today.

  Groups like the Leicester Group of the Victorian Society, find themselves in very embarrassing and difficult situations. We only hear of projects to demolish or substantially alter buildings at a very late stage in development proposals when others have invested large amounts of money and time in developing proposals and where one project may depend on the success of other adjacent projects. Once the local group of the Victorian Society knows of a project or area of redevelopment we undertake research if we believe buildings of historic worth may be involved. We are a voluntary group with members with full time jobs. It can take us a long time to uncover significant historical information to clinch the historic worth of a building sufficient to persuade English Heritage or the local authority that the building should be listed or the area made a conservation area. The redevelopment in Leicester at present is so widespread, covering such a vast area of the older historic city, that we find it difficult to keep up and ahead.

  This recently led to the application by the Leicester Group of the Victorian Society for listed status of a building on the periphery of Rafael Vinoli's new theatre for Leicester. It sent the developers and regeneration bosses into jitters because of the millions of pounds already invested in other projects in the St George's Cultural Quarter that depended on the flagship theatre design and threw into question the possibility of the architects' ability to modify the theatre building should listed status be granted. This would have been unnecessary had the local authority or English Heritage undertaken a survey to ascertain the value of the unlisted buildings within the conservation area.

  This illustrates too the low value attached to many distinctive but unlisted buildings in Conservation Areas which, with pressure for development being so intense and ultimate profits so high, leads to these small buildings being threatened with demolition. Yet these are precisely the buildings that lend character to a Conservation Area and a major reason why the areas are so designated.

  It certainly led to the Leicester Group of the Victorian Society, which tries to play a positive role, being vilified for simply trying to call attention to what was a very significant building within the area. We envisage similar problems on other sites within the city where we believe there should be created a Conservation Area. Such a proposal at this stage in regeneration in Leicester we know will be frowned upon—but our recent researches indicate that Frog Island, for example, is highly suitable both historically and architecturally for such a designation and we shall be requesting Conservation Area status.

  We could also give examples of Listed Buildings where pressure has been extremely strong to demolish historically significant elements in order to pack in extra floor space eg. Cripples' Guild/Disabled Building, Art Nouveau style in St George's Quarter building. Here the pretty parts of the building are to be saved and converted but the extremely unusual workshops of the Guild (important as perhaps the first and only early examples of workshops for the disabled) are to be demolished to make way for a high rise residential block rather than incorporated into the new restaurant complex.

  Our proposal therefore is for resources to go into researching the historic and architectural environment (as is done for archaeology) prior to redevelopment so that developers, regeneration companies, the local authorities and amenity societies can properly plan the redevelopment of areas knowing precisely what is significant and should be saved.

Rowan Roenisch Caseworker

Leicester Group of the Victorian Society