High Street Heritage and Conservation Areas

Debate between Jack Brereton and Marco Longhi

Wednesday 13th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered high street heritage and empty properties in conservation areas.

I am delighted to have secured this debate and to hold it today with you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue. Five years ago, I led a similar debate on town centre heritage action zones. At the time, it had recently been announced that Stoke-on-Trent would enjoy a zone that, while encompassing every surviving bottle oven in the Potteries, would focus mostly on Longton in my constituency, one of the six historic pottery towns that make up the modern city of Stoke-on-Trent, and home to the largest localised collection of bottle ovens.

Since the Clean Air Act 1956, the bottle ovens are no longer fired, but they are key to our identity as the Potteries, the authentic world capital of ceramics. They are the picture-postcard view—or, more likely these days, the selfie. As I said five years ago, the paradox of the international tourism market is that when people can travel anywhere in the world, they actually want to go to places that are unlike anywhere else on earth. Well, there is nowhere in the world like Stoke-on-Trent for bottle ovens, and there is nowhere in Stoke-on-Trent like Longton for bottle ovens.

The trouble is that if a bottle oven cannot be used for firing pots, what can be done with it? We have lost hundreds of them while struggling to find an answer to that question. The work of the HAZ in bringing together the owners of the remaining bottle ovens with local academics, experts from national bodies and the city council has been really positive in helping to exchange ideas and build a more coherent narrative for the role of historic ovens in our city’s future sense of place.

I am delighted that Stoke-on-Trent will be the home of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ new flagship arm’s length body, the Office for Place. I will say more about that later in my speech, but I note that its mission is to help councils to create beautiful, successful and enduring places. I have to say that our city council does indeed need help, and we must recognise that. There is a shortage of officers with the right skills in the field of heritage—a skills shortage that hampers councils of all political colours across the country. Historic England has experienced similar issues in filling highly skilled roles. It also hampers us as Members of Parliament when we need expert information that is just not there, whether for responding to consultations or bidding for additional funding.

For example, Stoke-on-Trent City Council recently ran a public consultation on the boundaries of each conservation area in Stoke-on-Trent. I responded to that consultation on the proposals for the conservation areas in my constituency, but time and again I was hampered because no character appraisal was available for the conservation areas within their existing boundaries. Such appraisals should surely be the basis for deciding what would be in character for any new boundaries to embrace. Where appraisals are available, they are sometimes decades old.

This really matters, because conservation areas must be meaningful; there must be some evident logic about what they are there to conserve. Optimally, in Stoke-on-Trent they will actively conserve and enhance the historic fabric of our city, with its unique character as the Potteries—the world capital of ceramics, and one modern city of six historic towns and numerous subsumed but distinct villages. An expert character appraisal is vital to determine how successful conservation areas are in achieving such an aim.

In the end, for this particular consultation I relied on my own appraisal from my years of being out and about and getting to know the character of each area and how areas are defined in the heads of local people. This is not necessarily how they appear to be defined in some cases, in which the areas defined seem to be aimed primarily at achieving convenient, bureaucratic tidiness.

There was a particularly ludicrous suggestion that certain out-of-character post-war housing in Fenton should be brought into the Albert Square conservation area. No explanation has been given as to why no character appraisal of any age is available for this conservation area, despite it having been declared in 1987. That really matters, because bringing someone’s house into a conservation area is so restrictive. If it is not obviously for heritage reasons, it looks arbitrary. This unpredictability as to what the council wants to achieve hinders necessary economic development.

Some of our current conservation areas are visibly in a very poor state. The focus should be on getting them into a much better state, rather than simply widening their boundaries or merging them for no good reason, other than perhaps to be seen to be doing something on paper that ticks the heritage box. But something on paper is not enough. Ultimately, both the enforcement action and the resources needed to address properties of concern have been insufficient.

Virtually no enforcement took place during the pandemic, and things have not got much better since. Effective enforcement action needs to be properly resourced, with increased use of section 215 notices. As the Minister will know, the Government guidance makes it clear that such powers should be used proactively, rather than just being complaint-led. Indeed, the guidance also makes it clear that authorities that use the powers proactively have been more successful in achieving wider regeneration benefits. The guidance says:

“Experience has shown that authorities that interpret the scope of s215 widely also tend to be more proactive and successful at using the powers to achieve wider regeneration objectives.”

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. This topic is close to my heart, and we can see from the Members present that the midlands and the Black Country feel strongly about heritage buildings.

Members may be aware of what happened to the Crooked House pub. With your indulgence, Ms Fovargue, I will bring up some of the related issues. On the role of local authorities in all this, my research has quickly established that it is voluntary for councils to maintain a register of heritage buildings—not all local councils do it. In fact, when councils do have a register, it is a document that sits on a shelf and can quite often be forgotten about. What does my hon. Friend think about making it compulsory for all local authorities to have a register of buildings that might tick the box for being of heritage value, and for that register to be reviewed annually or biannually to make sure it is maintained and up to date? Unfortunately, the Crooked House was not on such a local authority register.

[Jack Brereton]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important issue. I very much agree that more should be done to document important historic buildings, because they are very emotive. That shocking incident in particular—the destruction of what was an important local historic asset in the south of Staffordshire—has had a massive impact on the local community. We have seen a massive outpouring because of the damage that has been done. I agree with my hon. Friend about the important role that local authorities should play when it comes to heritage and the maintenance of a designated list of the historic buildings within local areas.

Sticks like section 215 are sadly needed because sometimes even generous carrots, such as funding from the heritage action zone schemes and partnership schemes in conservation areas, are an insufficient lure. This is especially the case when it comes to absentee landlords, often overseas, who are interested solely in land value and are sometimes, I suggest, waiting for heritage buildings to get into such a poor state that they are able, or required, to demolish them, as we saw with the pub that my hon. Friend just mentioned.

We have actually had buildings falling into the street in Longton. The latest one, on Market Street, could have killed someone. I and others made multiple reports to the council about the perilous condition, but action was not taken until it was too late. The whole of Longton conservation area is on the heritage at-risk register, and is rated as very poor by Historic England. The whole of the historic Trent and Mersey canal through the city, including where it runs down the west of my constituency, is also registered as at risk. This is the cumulation of decades of inaction, under-investment, decline and a preference for tinkering at the edges. It has to change.

Where there has been a proper focus, such as on Trentham mausoleum in my constituency—the only grade I listed property in Stoke-on-Trent—the situation has greatly improved. There is now a clear path for getting the mausoleum off the at-risk register, on which it is now listed as being in a “fair” condition and described as “generally sound”.

Hopefully, the Office for Place will help to focus minds further. I certainly look forward to engaging with it and talking through where I think our sense of place in the south of the city is being undermined. I have done the same with Historic England and am grateful to that body for ensuring that parliamentarians are involved and informed. Having made the case to win funding from the Government, it is right that MPs play an important role.