Hansard

Thank you, convener. At the outset, I will say that I am representing the Institution of Civil Engineers Scotland region this morning. I am a past president of the Institution of Civil Engineers and of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland. However, I am here to represent my own views, which align with ICE Scotland’s views.

Again, from the outset, I will say that ICE Scotland agrees with the petition by Save Britain’s Heritage that a minimum evidence requirement should be set to prevent the unnecessary use of emergency public safety powers for the demolition of listed buildings, and that it should be mandatory that a properly experienced and qualified engineer, who is registered with the CARE panel—the conservation accreditation register for engineers panel; more of that later—provides an opinion prior to a final decision to demolish.

I would like to cover three points in my opening statement, if that is all right. The first is about why a decision to demolish should be made only if the case for demolition is supported by a suitably competent and experienced conservation engineer, who also has expert knowledge on whether public safety is at risk.

Secondly, there are further arguments about how the current system is not working well enough in the interests of one of Scotland’s most important characteristics—our built heritage, which is part of what enhances our quality of life and appeals to and attracts visitors and tourists.

Thirdly, I hope that some of the history and present activities of CARE, with which I was closely involved during its formation, will be helpful. It is specifically mentioned in the petition as the appropriate body for drawing on expert opinion from qualified engineers who have experience in the sector.

On the first point, the demolition of a listed building should never be off the list of options, but it is a weighty matter that should meet a high bar for evidence-based decision making. The basic principle of listed buildings is that they have already been judged to be of such architectural or cultural significance that their loss would diminish the nation. They

“enrich Scotland’s landscape and”

help

“chart ... our history.”

They

“help to create Scotland’s distinctive character ... are a highly visible and accessible part of our ... heritage ... express Scotland’s social and economic past ... span a wide range of uses and periods”

and they

“contribute significantly to our sense of place”.

Those are not my words. They are Historic Environment Scotland’s justification and background to why it is important to list buildings of special architectural or historic interest. I could not put it better. I fully agree with all those points.

Kenneth Clark, in his significant cultural history, the BBC series “Civilisation”, which is from 1969 but is still available online, which is some indication of its importance, drew his evidence of the progress of our civilisation and what constitutes a civilised society from the built environment in our cities, our towns and our buildings—the grand ones and even the not-so-grand ones—just as much as he drew on art, music, literature, philosophy and systems of government.

Buildings are really important. Every listed building sits, by definition, in the pantheon of Scotland’s achievements as a civilisation because of the care that has been taken in the listing process. It is only fair and balanced that any decision to delist buildings is taken with the greatest of care, using the highest standard of evidence that can be mustered.

The ultimate delisting is, of course, demolition. The nub of the petition is that Scotland deserves to have the decision to demolish a listed building informed by the careful and experienced opinion of a civil or structural engineer, who is specially accredited as having reached a high level of competence in conservation projects. That competency should also be evidenced by membership of the CARE panel, which is run jointly by ICES and the Institution of Structural Engineers nationally, although there are suitably qualified people in Scotland under the CARE panel scheme.

I do not want to dwell too much on my second point, which is that the current system is not really working for Scotland’s reputation or for the sustainability and quality of its built heritage, mainly because I see that the evidence pack contains an excellent submission by the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland that sets out some high-profile cases in which it believes that the system has failed us, and adds four examples to the five cited by Save Britain’s Heritage in the original petition. Every listed building that is lost to the breaker’s demolition ball is a diminution of us all, and there have been, I think, too many in recent years.

There seem to be other obstacles to a reasonable resolution. Local authorities seem to be quite reluctant to exercise powers to make buildings safe and then claim the cost back from the building owner, which is understandable for cash-strapped authorities. They might also see that course of action leading to a confrontational legal challenge and be wary of becoming exposed to additional costs and having to call on resources to fight the owner in the courts—indeed, legal processes suck up a huge amount of resources and senior officers’ time, which they can ill afford. Although they are technically available to local authorities, those powers to intervene seem to me to be quite empty in practice and pragmatically. They are simply not being used.

There is also a natural reluctance for a local authority officer to gainsay any allegation from an external party or an external body that a building is a risk to public safety. Without access to solid evidence to rebuff such a submission, it is just not credible that an official would take a stance that immediately accrues future responsibility—for them personally and certainly for their employer—for public safety in connection with that building. They are still not in direct control of how that building is managed from that point on. I do not think that it is fair or reasonable for hard-working public servants to take on that burden, especially if they do not have the specialist technical knowledge to be able to take an informed view on the risk to public safety.

The powers, in my view, are not being taken up. The natural default reaction of any local authority official to a challenge on public safety principles is to concede. That is not a criticism of those individuals; it is human nature and I do not think that we can expect anything more than that. Therefore, having a mandatory opinion through a competent engineer’s report on the need or not for demolition would give the local authority the necessary support to make a decision that is genuinely in the public interest, informed by evidence. It really would provide the backbone of evidence to allow the right decision to be taken.

My next point is just for information, as I think that it could be useful. I was nursemaid or midwife to the CARE panel on its formation. I was the ICE representative on what was called the Edinburgh group, convened by Historic Scotland in the early 2000s or so, to explore the case for engineers to set up an accreditation body for heritage-related work that would mirror schemes that were already in place for architects and surveyors. The Edinburgh group prepared an outline model for defining the competency of engineers at that level. It began with the assumption that they would already be chartered engineers—so, beyond the level of the generalist chartered engineer, which is a pretty high bar. The competency would then be assessed rigorously through independent peer review.

I was vice-president of the ICE at the time; I chaired its structural and buildings board and wrote the paper for the ICE council to establish not only the CARE panel but also, in response to a request from council, the case for any expert panels to evidence specialist skills beyond the broad basic principles of being a chartered engineer. That case was made and was passed by council, and the way was clear for the CARE panel to be set up in and around 2003 or so, so it has been around for quite some time. I approached Ian Hume, who is an engineer who had then recently retired from English Heritage, to be its first chair. The CARE panel now has a little more than 100 members nationwide, including about 10 in Scotland, who are spread among Glasgow, Edinburgh and Inverness.

The question is whether that would be enough to meet the needs of a new system if the petition were to succeed. I think that it initially would be, because it would be a slowish start-up, but more resilience would obviously be desirable. I am convinced that having a mandatory rule of this nature built into legislation would persuade those conservation engineers who already have the experience but have never gotten round to it, or have never needed to get round to it, to subject themselves to a peer review process. It is a tough process, and rightly so. They would be spurred into action by any legislative role that was motivated by the need to address this issue in the national interest. I think that the CARE panel numbers would increase significantly.