23rd November 2005, 02:56 PM
If the Heritage Protection Register and the HER were one and the same, the end result would have to be that some sites on the list would be legally protected, and others wouldn't/couldn't be. The Government's idea is to reduce confusion, so to have the single findspots of post-medieval metal detector finds or pottery sherds dug up in 1876 on the same list as castles and barrows which have been through a critical process of professional assessment and evaluation, wouldn't make much sense. The HER/SMR is only an index to a much larger resource (the original source material), so in many cases doesn't carry the detail to be able to create a detailed assessment of a particular features' importance or question the accuracy of the original reference. Remember too that an HER can also include things that don't physically exist, such as the results of a negative archaeological evaluation, which would be impossible to include on a list that was acting as the basis for statutory legal protection regimes.
Personally, I don't believe there's as much confusion in the current system as the Government thinks there is, and I'm not convinced all of the review process is necessary, but parts of the system are very old and do require an overhaul (Parks and Gardens have no statutory protection for example, regardless of their grading). I reckon it's far better to use the HER as a basis for constructing a detailed seperate list of protected sites and structures which the planning system (and its non-archaeologically trained or historic building expert planning officers) can easily grasp and work with, than introduce confusion into the process with multiple gradings on the same list, some of which warrant statutory legal protection and some of which don't.
Personally, I don't believe there's as much confusion in the current system as the Government thinks there is, and I'm not convinced all of the review process is necessary, but parts of the system are very old and do require an overhaul (Parks and Gardens have no statutory protection for example, regardless of their grading). I reckon it's far better to use the HER as a basis for constructing a detailed seperate list of protected sites and structures which the planning system (and its non-archaeologically trained or historic building expert planning officers) can easily grasp and work with, than introduce confusion into the process with multiple gradings on the same list, some of which warrant statutory legal protection and some of which don't.