Stuart Fell: How can planning for built heritage succeed in Jersey?

Welcome all of you.

This talks a bit of an odd one out, I think, in the context of what you've heard so far today.

Uh, the talk is about built heritage, which in ordinary language means the places that we live in, work in, shopping. In many, many cases, about 4500. Um, items of built heritage in the island now recognized. And my talk is about how built heritage is bumping into the modern world. It sometimes bumps quite hard, as you'll see, uh, from this talk. The view stood on my own, not necessarily shared by the socite, but I do hope that most members would share them with me. I know, of course, many people here work in planning and have worked in planning and work with me in planning.

I've made my apologies to them earlier in the day, because this talk is provocative. There's no getting away from that and you'll see why in a moment. I want to talk first about the title of the talk, which isn't mine, it's John's and I'm grateful to him for formulating it.

And what I'd want to do first of all is give my impression of what success would look like if we are doing the job of conserving our heritage and respecting it, doing it well. I'll read them because they're brief and it's the only thing I'll read today. The first one. That significant buildings and the character and appearance of the island's special areas should be retained, nurtured and enhanced for the benefit of our community and for visitors to the island. That's one thing that's a good measure success measure. The second is that new development should pay proper regard to the island's historic legacy, enhances it with buildings and spaces of excellent quality that support a sense of well-being for individuals and for the community. Nothing contentious there. And I think that we are so far not succeeding very well in delivering those two objectives. Before going on to some criticism of the place where we've reached in trying to achieve conservation, I want to mention a few key experiences recently that are positive, areas where the Soso is working in a new area because the conservation of architectural heritage is a new section of the Soso, particularly more modern buildings.

I want to talk about the voluntary sector, and I'm thinking essentially here of the Socitaire and the National Trust, but also including Save Jersey's Heritage and other local groups who are all working closely on planning matters, though we each have our own priorities.

We share resources and expertise with the Trust. We've been around for 150 years, uh, the trust, uh, rather less than that, 8 to 6 years I counted. The first thing that I would mention is the trust meets weekly to look at planning applications on sensitive areas.

The development development on the screen here is one of those, though the range of planning applications that the Trust looks at varies enormously. The soy is a little bit more selective because our resources are limited to look at development.

But both organizations together comment on on on changes to planning policy and about major development. This is unfunded voluntary work. We're often regarded as obstructive complainers, and I've heard that when I worked at planning. I won't say what er planning officers call the National Trust, but it's not very complimentary. That's a long time ago, I should say, 20 years ago. But we feel that the job that we do is necessary because of what we see as shortcomings elsewhere in the planning and development infrastructure, more of which shortly. That's one positive issue that we are experiencing, partnership. Partnership in the voluntary sector brings resources together, makes us more effective. A second positive experience after the hiatus of the COVID lockdown is that the public enthusiasm for coming to talks, walks, and events of our heritage is undiminished, as you'll see by attending any of the talks that are offered.

A recent talk in Half depart, the Armory Hotel.

attracted such a large audience that the interest of the constable of Inteli was attracted, and he saw the value in presenting and understanding local heritage in the improvement areas around town that he is working on, of which there's a long program evolving.

As a consequence of that, uh, members of the Soste met with residents of the Belmont Road area and tried to explain to them, um, the significance of their area. Now this is quite a challenge and something that we're learning how to do, because people who join improvement groups for their local area are usually more concerned about parking and uh rubbish around the place and so on. So what we tried to do was evolve a way of explaining to people locally. Some of the background to the buildings that they are actually living in, and this is one slide of many which showed a range of people, drawn out from the local almanacs living in the various properties, and that begins to show that there's some depth, historical depth as to where places people live, and not just the architecture, you know, but there's a depth in history which makes the place important. Involvement in the Pomona Road area is going to follow shortly, and that's also a very interesting area, which normally you might write off as not being mainstream heritage.

In work like this, the continuity of resources and expertise over time is going to be challenging because people like me are going to retire before too long, hopefully.

I know my wife thinks so, but we have to find a way of fostering, encouraging new people into our organizations, particularly here at the Societe. A third point, and an important 11 of the most important ones recently, is that the strengthening of opposition to heritage losses arising from the proposed and street development.

Resulted in the planning minister of the time calling a public inquiry. The promoters of the development, Andy Holmes and Dandara withdrew their planning application and took stock. Then there was direct discussion between Dandara, the Socite, and the National Trust.

This sidestepped the normal interaction from planning applicants, which is with the planning department, but they saw value in rather than listening to our criticisms and slowing them down in their development, slowing them down quite a lot because a public inquiry had been launched. They thought it might be better to talk to us direct and try and eliminate. Our objections, our objections to their scheme, and that's what happened. So all the buildings in this view, certainly in the frontage of this view, which were due to be demolished, are now to be retained because Dandara and Andem saw the sense in following the lead that has been offered by the heritage bodies. We regard this as a very positive shift in direction and increasingly developers are coming direct to the Sosote and National Trust for a preliminary discussion before launching their planning application.

Not sure that the planning officers uh enjoy that situation quite so much.

The 4th introductory point is a recent discussion that I've had with the executive director of Mind Jersey about the relationship between the built environment and the effect on well-being of occupants and the local population.

I think this is a very fruitful area of cooperation, given the present government emphasis on the importance of local identity and the need to foster well-being in the community. These positive initiatives have one interesting thing in common. They work in parallel with the planning infrastructure or work around it, because there are shortcomings in uh what the government, I think, is doing for heritage. John will remind me now how far I'm getting on.

How many minutes have I got left. You're doing OK. You've got another 10 minutes or so. Thank you. Right. The first step in protecting and managing Uh, our physical environment is to define which particular items have interest.

And the one consequence of doing that, we've now 4500 buildings here.

Once you'd say these buildings are of interest, then people will assume that everything else isn't of interest, and there are targets for development in a world, particularly here, where the government is encouraging high density. Development, particularly in the town which has most of our protected assets. So Fern Place, this small group of 1850-ish cottages in Anne Street, will be demolished because it never got on to the agenda as a building worth conserving. This raises the importance of conservation areas. You can protect. Individual buildings, but that's like cherries in a cake. It's the whole cake that's important. What are the buildings between the buildings of high quality that also contribute to the character of an area. The difficulty with that kind of approach is that the damage to the built heritage is very, very significant and over a period of time we have probably lost hundreds of historic buildings because they aren't on the planning protection agendas and the Ferrari books that you're familiar with uh explain that in eloquent detail.

So conservation areas, what happened to those? Well, we are a long way behind the practice of conserving areas of historic townscape.

We are 56 years behind the UK in designating conservation areas.

We are 30 years behind Guernsey, which has 26 conservation areas. We are still looking at our first designation. That I blame, I blame and you'll find out soon, that that I think is a government uh lack of initiative, lack of interest in the built heritage.

One thing I should just remind you all about is that the one difference between Conserving built heritage that distinguishes it from just about every other form is that we live in these buildings, we occupy them, uh, they have a value and the land they sit on also has a value, and this slide of Hillary Street taken 23 years ago.

Shows the consequence of building large scale development in an historic area. We have a bank office building here on the left of this view and old cottages on the right. The land value of the cottages on the right far exceeds their value as individual historic buildings. No one in their right mind is going to invest money in restoring these cottages when the land value is so high. This is a hidden. Aspect of heritage which we ignore at our peril. And that brings me to the heart of this talk, this government's continuing ambivalence about the value of built heritage and its potential to enrich and enliven the island.

Government is more comfortable expressing an unwavering determination to support high density development, especially in the urban areas where historic buildings are most concentrated. There is no sign that I've seen that this preoccupation with development will change any time soon, and that provides the context for action by the voluntary sector, Soote National Trust and others. One direct consequence of this long established attitude of government is that privately owned buildings are often left vacant and decaying.

In the expectation that planning permission will be given for redevelopment.

Established planning law enables the planning minister to secure dilapidated properties against decay. But that power has never been used. The longer a building remains empty, the more it costs to repair it. That extra cost is reflected in the after value or the sale price of the property. If the decay goes on too long, uh, then demolition is probably the only tenable or viable option.

Here are a few examples that you'd be familiar with. They they tell the same story. The co op site, the co op bought these properties in Demarck Street for for demolition and development, but uh the the listing of these buildings caught up with them. They were empty. At least 20 years vacant before they some of them were restored, some were beyond restoration and were destroyed. 16 New Street, owned by de Gruy, left vacant for 30 years anticipating a redevelopment which didn't happen, eventually given to the National Trust for a pound, who then restored it. So that's a way out for developers. Get rid of the problem. This one for for a Simon Place, part of the Ant Street development, uh, left by the brewery owners to rot for 30 years and is now beyond repair and will be demolished.

So Soussy, another building, early 19th century fine house on the Anne Street brewery site also left vacant and fortunately this one will be saved because a use could be found, but only because it's a large scale development where these sorts of losses of potential development can be compensated for.

And finally in this group, a cottage on Devoyne Lane before 1834 this was built sitting empty presumably for redevelopment, but it's a listed building and the lack of action by successive governments means that these situations continue and in fact the Uh, government is not a very good role model in its own listed building ownership. By government, I mean the government and its various state departments. The La Salle Workshop, given to the government in 1995 by Harold Lasaler, and then 20 years later it's still sitting empty. It's now been restored, fortunately, but why does it take so long for government to make a simple decision? To repair a building and get it back into use, La Folly in exactly the same situation, empty, I think soon after we came to the island in 1995. It's been empty ever since. We know that it's the intention to repair this building, but why is it sitting empty when there's a shortage of accommodation? And of course um Saint Savior's Hospital, government owned, most of it empty. So has asked in the past for access to this building and it's been refused because it's obviously thought by government we have no right to inquire into the condition of historic buildings.

John, how am I doing? You have 4 minutes.

I'll touched very briefly on the change of practice in the public heritage sector.

When I joined. The planning service here 20 odd years ago and before I came here, heritage officers were there to give advice to owners. They went out and talked, explained, offered suggestions as to how a building might be repaired, how it might be extended, and so on. That situation doesn't apply anymore. There's a new rule which is called developer pays. If you want to restore or alter your historic building, you need to appoint a consultant, architect, maybe a heritage expert. And then you put your proposition to planning and planning these days only say you're really yes or no. They have no direct involvement, um, in advising to get the best solution for a particular, uh, property. And in fact, the, the link between planning officers and the heritage advisors in Jersey um is now really quite remote, and in a recent planning committee, there was even a slight discussion between the planning committee and the heritage officer as to whether she should be allowed to speak on a particular matter.

Now that is a disaster in public planning. There have been recent reports on the functioning of the planning service.

None of which have been very complimentary.

The most recent. Suggests that the service, the planning service is dysfunctional. It's no great surprise then that buildings that are in need of repair are left derelict or decaying and no action is taken.

That is a situation that can be remedied by the government through providing more funding, and I'd suggest if that does happen, then there should be a refocusing on the work of heritage officers in public service to help individual property owners, not leave it to others.

The experts brought in are often off island, so we aren't building capacity here or expertise in the way that we deal with these matters. We tend to be pushing out. These important matters, important local issues are to outsiders. So I think the infrastructure of planning as it now exists is broken and it needs to be fixed, and all the voluntary sector can do is keep chipping away and following its own initiatives where they seem to fulfill a useful purpose.

And a key one of those is talking to people, interesting people in the built heritage. Our architecture section is researching and sharing the research with owners where they want to listen to us. My final thread is uh the problems that occur with high density development. I'll flip through these fairly quickly.

There's no point conserving heritage if the new development that's being built around it is uncaring about the context of the heritage environment and just see one example here. Commercial Street, an old pub, two-story pub, which is now in the wrong place. Everything there is like a soldier out of step. It's the oldest building there, but everything else is bigger, bolder. And not particularly appealing certainly to my eye. And there's a sense now that as long as you have make a token effort at conservation of buildings, that's all right. On the esplanade, an old warehouse, only a bit of it's retained. The key ingredient here is development. In this case, 6 stories, so you keep the front of an old warehouse as a token, and the 6 stories of development goes behind it. This is an interesting one because it illustrates a building that was burnt out.

It's the Wesley Street Chapel. Only the facade has left. Uh development has to go on because that's the government imperative build, build, build, and in this case, there's a kind of encroachment, almost, I hate to use the word parasitic parasitic, but I can't think of a better one, where development simply crawls over what was an historic building to get the numbers there. My point is, Is the quantum of development the only meaningful measure of success, I think not.

Finally, I think I am on time now, John, just um ending in 30 seconds.

This is a complex subject.

You've had just a taste of what's going on here. Um, I don't oppose new development. I encourage it in appropriate circumstances, but the issue is about quality and relevance. And just make one point really about these slides, the buildings on the left, we are living in the past, partly, that's a privilege if we are living in the past, we use it, occupy it, and so on. The buildings here have a great riches to them. They link us to our past. They're visually complex. They speak to us if we look about the history of the island. I think that new development, and this is where I think we are going off course, new development should be very skillful in picking up on what the built heritage is about, what it means, and creating enduring buildings for the future that we can be proud of. Thank you.