It’s the last week of June and we’ve made it to halfway through what is turning out to be a very turbulent year politically. I’m pleased to report a steadier ship at Armour Heritage where we have maintained a relatively unbroken flow of work during the first six months of 2017. Nevertheless, we have noticed a change in focus in the day to day workload, particularly regarding Heritage Statements and desk based work, which is more often now centred around a specific heritage issue requiring a bespoke response in terms of our advice and output. Matters concerning the setting of heritage assets has been, as it so often is, our main focus. Much of our office-based work is broadly related to Listed Buildings and the need to make them compatible with 21st century living and sustainability, new builds and extensions to existing Listed or undesignated properties in Conservation Areas, or the impact of proposed new builds on specific heritage assets.
In our day-to-day work AH produces a relatively large number of heritage statements, within the majority of which setting is an issue to a greater or lesser degree, and we are often surprised at the wide range of responses to the associated planning applications which will vary widely on a national, regional and local basis. We often find what we would regard as ‘non-issues’ blown out of all proportion and sites which we have advised as contentious sailing through planning with not so much as a comment, positive or negative, on our contribution.
It’s clear we’re not the only ones juggling with issues of setting, which is being widely debated in a number of heritage forums, due in part to the result of a landmark case in Derbyshire where a High Court judge recently overruled the planning inspector following a public enquiry which proposed up to 400 new homes close to a Grade I Listed Building, Derbyshire Hall.
Whilst the Derbyshire Hall case concluded the Inspector had failed to focus on the "historic, social and economic connections" between the hall and the development site, the case also highlights the need for greater guidance on setting which is increasingly becoming a grey area in terms of planning policy, and which would benefit from further robust, rational and realistic scrutiny.
