Falling Masonry
The scene in Holborn, London, where Julie Sillitoe was killed by a falling parapet in February 2014. The building owner told the inquest he had never had the buidling surveyed or inspected in the seven years he had owned it. HSE and Camden Council didn’t prosecute.
One of the most challenging issues affecting the world of building conservation is its dark secet: the fact that dozens of people are either killed, injured or narrowly missed by masonry falling off poorly-maintained historic buildings in Britain’s high streets.
Research by Maintain shows that 12 passers-by have been killed by masonry falls in the UK since 1999, two of them children in prams. Of these, 3 were falls from listed historic buildings.
It is a remarkable fact that unless the building is a “workplace” within the meaning of health & safety legislation, there is absolutely NO duty on building owners to keep them in good repair – even when their condition threatens death and serious injury to those passing nearby. All that local councils can do is to serve notices on the owner when the danger from the building becomes clear.
Maintain keeps a register of “falling masonry”incidents in the UK, and this can be downloaded here.
Maintain’s briefing on the “workplace” maintenance duty can be downloaded here.
Taylor Review of the Sustainability of Church of England Churches and Cathedrals
The long-awaited Taylor review of the sustainability of listed Church of England churches and cathedrals has duly appeared – and recommends sweeping changes to the organisation and funding of church repairs and maintenance.
Churches are currently trapped in a cycle of neglect followed by avoidable repair for some, at extravagant, and often Heritage Lottery Fund grant-aided expense, while many of the rest are left deteriorating.
HLF and Historic England have long refused to grant-aid routine maintenance, despite its obvious conservation and financial advantages. Some churches that skimp on maintenance have even actively welcomed being added to the “at risk” registers run by Historic England and its equivalents because it is the passport to getting HLF grants.
So Maintain welcomes the Taylor recommendations. “The penny seems to have dropped in Whitehall and Church House that maintenance saves money,” says Maintain chair George Allan. “Let’s just say that this realisation, although long overdue, is very welcome.”
The review, originally set up by Chancellor George Osborne in 2016, was tasked with “exploring new models of financing repairs and maintenance of churches …including maintenance costs and repairs funding from lottery and central government grants” as well as making recommendations on the wider community use of churches.
In effect, the Report recommends that wider community use of historic churches is the rationale for spending public money – more wisely than at present – on church maintenance.
The recommendations include the piloting of a scheme to appoint Community Support Advisers to help parishes open up their churches to local users, and Fabric Support Officers to ensure that parishes maintain their churches properly, helped by access to a “Minor Repairs Fund”.
Maintain’s evidence to the Review estimated that the Church of England had a repairs backlog of £1.5bn on its 12,000 listed churches alone (at 2013 prices) and that this was rising at £70M a year.
The recommendations are also an implicit rebuke to the major grant-giving organisations, notably Historic England and the Heritage Lottery Fund, which have pursued policies of refusing to grant-aid, or incentivise, maintenance, rather than repair.
This is the third report to have appeared in recent weeks making the same implicit criticism – the others being the Mendoza report on Museums and Galleries and a DCMS report on the top 16 directly-funded museums and galleries.
Maintain intends to be actively involved in the creation of new arrangements to ensure that churches are better maintained from now on.
Top Museums face £150m repair backlog, says report
Two strategic reviews of the Museums sector, published on 14th November, draw attention to the dire state of maintenance and repair of many of the nation’s museums and galleries and may force Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic England to review their long-time refusal to support routine maintenance.
One report concerns the top 16 directly-funded museums and galleries including the British Museum, British Library, Tate Gallery, Imperial War Museum and Royal Greenwich Museums, and the other – the Mendoza Report – the others.
“At one [unnamed, top-16] museum, an entire gallery was closed recently due to water ingress and damage to the roof” says one review. “At the 2015 spending review, the museums collectively identified £142.9m for 2016/17 to 2020/21 in urgent or pressing maintenance repairs, although this may have been cautious or an underestimate, and does not include desired improvements.”
The museum sector itself identified a £150M backlog – in 2004 – so it is hardly a surprise if an estimate of a £142M backlog for a mere sixteen, 11 years later, is an underestimate.
The sector’s obsession – and that of its sponsors – with ritzy new facilities and exhibitions comes in for criticism in the same report.
“Quite often those providing donations or funding from arts, culture and heritage sources or corporate sponsors will only allow capital expenditure to be allocated to public facing elements. The lack of sufficient maintenance of building fabric and services, offices and other non-public facing operations is creating significant risks. These risks represent an underfunding of the infrastructure and operations which have the potential to materially and adversely affect otherwise efficient operating models. It is difficult to determine how significant efficiencies can be made or money invested elsewhere until more of this critical work is done. The sponsored museums need to reconsider what can be funded from reserves, endowments or other funding.”
Museums and galleries have long been a concern to Maintain, particularly as the sector’s ambitious management tends to spend its money on its collections and attention-seeking exhibitions and consistently fails to devote the funds needed to keep their (often historic) buildings properly maintained.
Maintain has seen some spectacular lapses in basic maintenance, for example, in Glasgow, whose Museum of Modern Art (illustrated here) left an overflow running for so long that a Corinthian column was covered in mould and ferns for two years, until Maintain intervened. The City’s Burrell Collection had to be closed after its award-winning 1980s building suffered from repeated water ingress and is now being repaired at an eye-watering cost of £66M.
The Museums Association has responded that “the report recognises the severe funding difficulties experienced by many museums, therefore it is disappointing that the government has failed to identify any new resources or capacity to improve the sustainability of the sector. The government’s own figures show that local authority funding for museums in England in 2016 was 31% lower in real terms than in 2010. This dramatic reduction in core funding has resulted in museum closures, reduced opening hours, the loss of museum expertise and low morale.”
The reports will also make uncomfortable reading for both Historic England and the Heritage Lottery Fund, whose policies – never to make any grants for maintenance, only repairs – have in our view contributed to the present crisis. The reports’ recommendations imply that both bodies will have to look again at these policies.
HLF is urged by the Mendoza report to “focus its museums funding on capital projects with a significant impact, whether major transformation or much-needed repair of valuable buildings. It should consider how to interpret ‘additionality’ in the contemporary context where museums need to use investment to tackle buildings conservation and maintenance backlogs, attract and maintain new audiences, and generate new funding streams.”
HLF has responded by saying how wonderful its funding has been for the museum sector, adding that the Mendoza Review will provide “important context as we consult on and develop our next strategic funding framework starting in April 2019.”
HE is said to be going to “work with ACE [Arts Council England] and HLF to review the maintenance and conservation issues for museums located within listed buildings, and how best to support them.”