Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Committee

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee 07 December 2023

07 Dec 2023 · S6 · Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Item of business

Historic Environment Strategy

McKelvie, Christina SNP Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse Watch on SPTV

I agree that participation is incredibly important. You will know that the strategy was developed over the summer of 2022, and that participation was at the heart of it. It was developed by Historic Environment Scotland, but the Scottish Government, the Built Environment Forum Scotland and many other organisations and people with an interest were also involved. There was a public consultation at that point, and HES published its “We Asked, You Said, We Did” report, which was a way of conveying to the people who engaged with the consultation process how important their ideas were. In that process, the point was raised about people not knowing what was on their doorstep and getting to know what was on their doorstep. 09:45 In my response to the deputy convener, I talked about my intention to work closely with local authorities. Many of the properties that HES looks after are also looked after by local authorities. For instance, Chatelherault country park in my constituency is incredibly well looked after by South Lanarkshire Council. That is one example, but members will all have examples from their constituencies of the partnership between local government and HES and therefore the Scottish Government, which is incredibly important. One thing that I wanted to do when I came into my current role was to reinvigorate the culture conveners forum. We have done that, and the forum has now met. We decided immediately that we needed to have an event to look at how we work together and the value of culture in all of our lives. That will be called a culture value summit, which is a straightforward name for it, and it will happen in the new year. That is very important. I am interested in the local authority historic environment group that Alexander Stewart mentioned. I have not heard of that and it has not been mentioned by any of the culture conveners—I think that I met them all in that meeting just a few weeks ago. However, I will pick up the point and see where that group got to. In big cities such as Edinburgh or Glasgow, the historic environment is everywhere. In fact, most of the authorities in those places work in buildings that are part of the historic environment, because the city chambers are important buildings. However, that comes with challenges when there are issues with the buildings and local authorities are involved in their clean-up and restoration. That partnership is important to me. I want to strengthen and grow it, but I want to work together much more dynamically to tackle the challenges that are coming down the road and we can do that only in partnership. There is no way that being separate from local government on the issue would deal with those challenges. I will take away the issue about the local historic environment group and speak to Councillor Maureen Chalmers, with whom I work closely, as she is the chair of the community wellbeing board.

Search Hansard contributions

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee 07 December 2023

In the same item of business