Civic Societies Forum

Guerilla Restoration - has anyone been involved?

2008-11-28T10:29:27+00:00

The Times published an article recently, which featured a member of the public who took the restoration of a local neglected building into his own hands, and started his own group to make repairs and start restoration work. I have had a call from The Sunday Telegraph who are keen to know whether any Civic Societies have been involved in similar “guerilla restoration”. If you have, I would be grateful if you could get in touch with me (cwilliams at civictrust dot org dot uk) and I can pass the information on to the press. Please do get in touch if you have any relevant information, as we need to take every available opportunity to raise the profile of our work. Thank you.

Heritage Open Days - What benefits for Civic Societies in being involved!!!

2008-04-02T08:47:46+00:00

Heritage Open Days celebrates England’s fantastic architecture and culture by offering free access to properties that are usually closed to the public or normally charge for admission. Every year on four days in September, buildings of every age, style and function throw open their doors, ranging from castles to factories, town halls to tithe barns, parish churches to Buddhist temples. It is a once-a-year chance to discover hidden architectural treasures and enjoy a wide range of tours, events and activities which bring to life local history and culture.

In 2007 were involved in Heritage Open Days , opening buildings, offering guided tours and giving historical talks. The new Heritage Open Days round is about to open thus if you want a way to raise your profile and educate others about your historic environment this is your perfect opportunity.

It would be interesting to hear the thoughts from Civic Societies who participated last year on what the benefits of being involved is?

Local Distinctiveness - Heritage Environment Protection Bill

2008-06-20T07:36:27+00:00

Post from Judith Lanham, Secretary, The Hayfield Civic Trust

This may be open as a topic already but I would like to open/add to a discussion on local distinctiveness and the Heritage Environment Protection Bill that is currently under review.

Like many small towns and villages in Britain, Hayfield has no great building or site of momentous historical importance. It is an assemblage of many small features and domestic scale buildings from successive periods. We would not expect to draw on ‘Heritage Funds’ but we would like to see a stronger responsibility put on local authorities so that when work is carried out in the parish under whatever budget may apply, the work should be done with regard to local character.

Even though most of the village falls within a conservation area this does not seem to afford us much protection. We have an assortment of street signs. Recently we had to protest to get a missing fingerpost replaced with a wooden one because High Peak in future were replacing wooden signs with metal and so on.

I recently attended the Heritage Forum run by English Heritage and a number of groups raised the similar issues about ‘humble history’ and what to do if a community has just a few or maybe even one building of interest. We were all disappointed that the ‘performance indicator’ for street scene had been reduced to ‘cleanliness’. It was also disappointing but understandable that the professinal conservation officers felt there would be little support for this proposal because they would not have the manpower or financial resources to support it.

It is important that where heritage work is undertaken it should be done to the highest standard, but it is a shame that the hurdles are set so high that respect for local colour is abandoned altogether.

Blue Plaques

2008-04-24T08:26:57+00:00

The local council are having internal discussion about starting up their own blue plaque scheme. This is unrelated to the English Heritage scheme. The speed that they go at they will still be talking about it in 2 years thus I was wondering if any other Civic Societies organise blue plaques and if so would you be willing to share your knowledge about how we could implement such a scheme i.e. funding? selection criteria? shortlising?

Even if we do not have the capacity to do so we can ensure we “manage” the local authority to implement a scheme that does not only take into consideration council objectives!!!

Heritage Champion Clarification!

2008-04-25T06:03:57+00:00

It says on the HELM website Over 150 authorities now have a Heritage Champion and have asked an elected Member to undertake the role. This is nearly 50% of Local Authorities. I am a bit concerned however because when I asked the Local Council who the Heritage Champion was for my Local Authority they did not seem to know what I was talking about.

Do any other Civic Societies have any knowledge of this scheme?

Local Buildings Project

2008-04-24T12:25:17+00:00

Other than the Heritage Lottery Fund does anyone know of any other funding that can be accessed for Heritage Projects. We want to start a project working to identify all local historic buildings “a local list”.

We want to do this because although some of the buidlings in the local area may not be of national interest they hold a lof of importance to the local community and we want to have a way that planners and developers can view this in a formal manner.

Any help would be very welcome.