According to MPs, nearly half of the government’s 1.5m homes target could be met if vacant historic buildings were utilised
In a report examining the state of the UK’s built heritage, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee explained how historic buildings such as churches, monuments and old factories are under significant and increasing strain from cost pressures, workforce shortages and a complex planning system.
Highlighting a major missed opportunity for heritage to contribute to the local and national economy, the committee calls for a change in the government’s approach to both securing the long-term future of the historic environment and unlocking its full potential to support growth.
Dame Caroline Dinenage MP, Chair of the CMS Committee, said: “Historic England says that there is potential to create a whopping 670,000 new homes and yet the government’s approach reveals a deep complacency, is devoid of ambition, and shows a complete lack of imagination.”
Supporting the committee’s call, Simon Vernon-Harcourt, Design & Planning Director for City & Country, commented: “We strongly support the Committee’s call for a national reuse first approach. Across the UK, there are thousands of historic and previously developed buildings that have the potential to provide exceptional new homes while retaining the heritage and character that make our places distinctive.
“Historic buildings are not obstacles to meeting housing demand, but an integral part of the solution. The finding that their rescue could unlock up to 670,000 homes reveals the scale of an opportunity that has long been overlooked.”
Targeted relief for conversion and maintenance is recommended
The report states that historic buildings are a missed opportunity for the local and national economy.
The committee calls for a change in the government’s approach to both securing the long-term future of the historic environment and unlocking its full potential to support growth.
It warns that the current VAT regime is discouraging repairs and reuse by making them more expensive than new construction and calls for targeted relief for maintenance and conversion.
“Old buildings and other pieces of our past play a vital economic, social and cultural role in our communities, but the sight of leaking roofs, crumbling brickwork and vacant premises illustrates how the current policy approach to heritage is failing miserably to support either its protection or potential,” Dinenage explained.
Funding for repairs to churches and other places of worship should also be maintained, the committee adds.
Skills should be at the heart of historic building restoration
In addition to making the case for reforms to the planning process and launching a ‘heritage-to-housing’ scheme, the report outlines recommendations to improve financial support for old properties and to tackle skills shortages in the heritage workforce.
It says there should be a new commitment to promoting careers and boosting skills in the heritage sector, amid a warning that workforce shortages pose one of the most serious risks to the long-term protection of the UK’s built heritage.
Dinenage commented: “Ministers also need to ensure adequate funding that incentivises repairs and renewal over construction, and meet head-on the serious risk to heritage posed by the lack of skills and workforce in the sector.”
Vernon-Harcourt concluded: “A clearer national policy framework supporting reuse and retrofit could help unlock more regeneration opportunities, accelerate the delivery of new homes on previously developed land and ensure that historically significant buildings remain viable and sustainable for future generations.
“For example, the reuse of redundant buildings, however long they have been unoccupied, should be except of CIL payments, as should development in brownfield sites.”
