A surprising piece by Paul Dale on the Birmingham Post blog (link here) about how the council views the possibility of the current Central Library (above) being listed. It seems Clive Dutton the director of regeneration would demolish it regardless of whether it was listed or not.
Paul Dale reports…

An interesting intervention from city council regeneration director Clive Dutton when addressing a meeting of the seven architects shortlisted for the £193 million Birmingham library project.
….Dutton rose to put all those present straight over the matter of the Central Library in Paradise Forum.
The 1970s building would be demolished come what may, even if campaigners succeed in having it listed, Dutton said. “Whether or not that building is listed it will come down,” he added for good measure.
…Whatever he says publicly, Dutton cannot know for certain that the council would succeed in obtaining permission to demolish the library if the building is listed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
If we rule out the likelihood of a midnight raid by bulldozers, with Dutton at the head of the demolition crews, the best that the council could do would be to ask the DCMS for permission to flatten the building.

Photo Credit: Martin Hartland

Free entry and drinks to a series of debates/talks about architects and how they might make Birmingham a better place. For more see the Birmingham Architectural Association. Hat tip to Rob.

Martin Mullaney has popped up the city council report on the listed swimming baths on Moseley Road. Rather than aim to keep both pools working the recommendation is

to re-open the larger pool (currently closed) and to use the other space for an alternative use, potentially training, health and for the local community. These other uses would have the benefit of providing an income which could help support swimming and also open the building up to members of the local community that currently do not use it.

Hat tip upyerbrum

This weekend voting comes to an end on the rather low key campaign to hand £50 million from the Big Lottery Fund to one of four projects.

Amongst the finalist is the Black Country Urban Park which plans to turn the Black Country Green. What to do with Birmingham’s Historic Buildings? The programme includes support for a bid for World Heritage Status for the Black Country canals and their associated buildings. It’s the most local of the ideas pitching for the £50 million and will have the greatest impact on the West Midlands built heritage.

To vote online go the this site - you’ll have to log n and register to prevent us all voting oddles of times.

Another project which will have some local benefit is the Sustrans pitch - part of a national walking and cycling network which would see the money spent in Birmingham and 78 other local authorities.

You may have spotted on our website a little badge which says shop here to support the Birmingham Conservation Trust. If you use this link to do your shopping between now and January 31st 2008 we could win £1000.

Whether we win the competition or not we will still receive a small percentage of the money you spend on Christmas presents or perhaps holiday flights. With some things we get loadsamoney: if you sign up for Sky TV through the link we could receive up to £120!

I know it sounds a bit bonkers but you pay the normal prices. We are simply getting a share of the shops marketing budget for passing your custom their way.

http://www.buy.at/birminghamconservation

So please have a good browse and buy if the deals are good for you. Tell your friends. At the moment Aldershot Football Club is in the lead - lets make that Birmingham Conservation Trust!

The Minister for the West Midlands, Liam Byrne has summarised the plan, as it currently stands, for Eastside. (Download his short briefing here). It appears that the old Parcel Force site next to the Grade 1 Curzon Street Station is to be sold by Advantage West Midlands to Birmingham City Council for the development of :

Brit School – a new Educational City Academy expected to be in the region of 100,000 sq feet housing 950 students: the Brit School – which provides an arts led curriculum to 14 to 19 year olds fit into the overall vision for the Learning and Leisure Quarter and complements the arts, dance, media and conservatoire curriculum faculties promoted in the area by the BCU. AWM are negotiating to be named as sponsors for this project potentially alongside BCU and BCC.

The rest of the document is neatly summarised here, and thanks to Pete at the Custard Factory blog for alerting us.

The campaign to see VAT refunded for work on Listed buildings owned by charities is gathering pace. The Princes Regeneration Trust has just published a report by the New Economics Foundation proposing VAT relief for work on listed buildings owned by charities and those found in the most deprived neighbourhoods.

Heritage Link has also been campaigning for VAT relief and to quote their assessment of the situation is informative, so lets quote it in full:

What is particularly interesting about the PRT proposal is the financial assessment behind it. Value Added: the economic, social and environmental benefits of creating incentives for the repair, maintenance and re-use of historic buildings sets out new research, existing studies and a full cost benefit analysis.

It calculates that the scheme in the first year of operation would cost £1.3m rising to a maximum of £48m in the tenth year but that the social, economic and local economic benefits created would mean that within four years, the scheme would deliver a net and growing benefit to the Treasury. These figures do not include the less measurable benefits of increasing social capital through empowering local residents to improve their areas and strengthening the social cohesiveness of communities.

The figures on comparative environmental costs are staggering. ‘Taking local important historic building from the brink of demolition by putting incentives on reuse and refurbishment’ would, nef calculates, save 490 tonnes of carbon per year. The report puts carbon emissions resulting from demolition and rebuild compared with refurbishment and re-use as seventy times greater.

The report rehearses the well known ‘perverse incentives’ of the current Vat regime: it provokes more change in historic buildings than is necessary; it discriminates against small volunteer-led charities like Building Preservation Trusts, thus discouraging participation at community level because of added complexity and wasted volunteer time and effort. Higher VAT dilutes the effectiveness of existing public investment in the historic environment; it encourages the neglect of community assets, often leading to the loss of historically important local buildings; and finally it undermines environmental sustainability by making small repairs and re-use proportionately more expensive than energy intensive and wasteful major works, demolition or new build. The full report will shortly be on the Trust’s website and on Heritage Link’s www.heritagelink.org.uk

Whilst the report was very positively received by the Treasury and DCMS, its proposals were not adopted in the budget. Heritage Link is now working with the Prince’s Regeneration Trust and DCMS who are jointly undertaking further work to see if an agreed proposal could go forward from those in the heritage world which would meet the wish expressed by the Chancellor in his budget speech ‘And in the run up to the Spending Review, the Culture Secretary and I will examine the help we can give to churches and heritage buildings that are at the heart of so many communities’

Clearly the Olympics puts the government under some pressure and that last senetence suggests the campaign may be pushing on an open door. Meanwhile The Heritage Lottery Fund has also announced how it will handle a further cut in funding as a result of 2012.

We now expect to manage the reduction in our budgets over a longer period - the known lifetime of HLF through to 2019. This means we can avoid sudden peaks and troughs in our funding and will still distribute an awards budget of £180million pa between 2009 and 2012

We can now share with you a response from the Heritage Lottery Fund to the news that the bill for the Olympics has risen to 9.35 billion. Their statements says:

‘This is bad news for the UK’s heritage’, comments Dame Liz Forgan, Chair, Heritage Lottery Fund. ‘Our grant making for the foreseeable future will now be seriously reduced, affecting people right across the United Kingdom. In recent years our Lottery money has been the single largest source of support not only for our historic places, museums and galleries but also for our natural heritage and the cultural history of the people of these islands. Heritage funding was already due to drop because of the Olympics and this further cut will impact on our ability to invest in the nation’s heritage at exactly the time it is being showcased to the world in 2012.’
The Heritage Lottery Fund will now begin to revise its forward funding plans with a view to letting clients know as soon as possible what its revised forecasts for annual levels of grant-making are for 2008 onwards.
Projects which have already received a promise of funding from the HLF need not be concerned: the Fund will work to ensure that commitments can be honoured.

Heritage Link issued a statement today which gave more specific numbers.

It means a raid of £90m from the HLF and comes on top of already reduced funding after 2008, when HLF’s current £290m per year drops to £180m. This further reduction of £90m is the equivalent of four years’ spend on small community and voluntary sector grants and the entire grant stream aimed at involved young people.

They went on to urge the government to put its money where its mouth is:

The announcement also comes just a week after the Prime Minister’s speech at Tate Modern when he recognised the contribution that arts and culture make to the economy, society and to the country. In the same week, the new Heritage White Paper2 published by the Department for Culture Media and Sport made key statements on the value of heritage. The Government has recognised the contribution made by volunteers in ring-fencing Big Lottery money but seems to have forgotten the tens of thousand of volunteers that care for our heritage.

Full statement here.

So tell us, what effects will the doubling (or trebling if you include the new £2.7bn contingency fund) of the cost of the Olympics have on the ability of building preservation trusts and other community groups to keep on finding innovative new ways to conserve, use and revitalise our old buildings?

Back in November 2006 The Guardian reported that the Heritage Lottery Fund was expecting to lose £143 million as a result of the Olympics, mostly taking effect after 2009. At the time the HLF told the paper:

We would, of course, be concerned at any further allocation of heritage lottery money to the Olympics, since it would affect our ability to support our national heritage at a time when it will be an important part of the UK’s wider offering to Olympic visitors.

Also last year Tristram Hunt ( a trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund) warned the government against “raiding” heritage funds for the Olympics, saying:

…if more people are going to appreciate the history and meaning of this old, complex country, then ministers are going to have to keep their fingers out of the lottery till and deliver a proper heritage settlement.

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations gave it’s double edged reaction today by first saying it “welcomed the Government’s commitment that the voluntary and community sector will not suffer as a result of the increased budget for the 2012 Olympic Games” but then already flagging up fears for heritage funding:

We remain concerned that arts, sports and heritage charities and community groups may lose out as a result of the diversion and are seeking further details on exactly how this commitment will be kept.

Only last month the chairman of the Big Lottery Fund Sir Clive Booth said it would be criminal to divert resources:

I don’t know how anybody could live with themselves, let alone Gordon Brown, if they were taking money off projects such as that to close an Olympic funding gap

Of course we are a charity and one of those voluntary organisations which the government argues will not be harmed by the leap in the budget for the Olympics. Any fall in the budget for the Heritage Lottery Fund may have a direct impact of what we can accomplish here in Birmingham. It would be good to know what we can expect.

Peter Hewitt at the Arts Council is already certain this is bad news for his sector, while Variety reports (first thing this morning) it will have an impact on film (thanks to the National Film Society).

Meanwhile Seb Coe of the Olympic bid described sport as “the hidden social worker in the community”.