III  PRESENTATIONS

PRESENTATION BY DAVID LAMMY MP

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Culture, Media & Sport

Your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to be here today. I have spent my first few months as Minister for Culture getting to know my sectors and thinking about my priorities. Heritage is one of them. We are taking forward the Heritage Protection Review and preparing the White Paper for next year. I am also working with the sector to look how we address the needs of our ecclesiastical heritage and, in particular, the rural churches.

I have been out and about visiting English Heritage, National Trust and other historic sites. It soon became clear to me that I needed to know more about the heritage skills agenda. Today’s seminar is therefore a great opportunity for me to listen and learn more about what is going on and to consider how best I can support your collective efforts.

We have a clear vision for the historic environment as a driver for economic and social development - in any number of ways: regeneration, tourism, education, community cohesion. But it will only be able to fulfil this potential if we have the necessary skills to look after it and use it properly.

I realise that when we talk about heritage skills we are talking about a huge range of activities: heritage building skills which are the responsibility of the CITB; land based heritage skills cared for by LANTRA and the cultural heritage skills which fall to Creative and Cultural Skills.

And there is the associated issue of the wider generic skills that the sector needs such as management and communication, as well as training for volunteers. I know Heritage Link is doing some research to map these too. This is something we are also lookingwill restore at in the context of the Heritage Protection review.

Individual restoration projects will typically employ crafts people from across all of these areas. For example at an historic house, dry-stone wallers will repair the ha ha, specialist horticulturalists would restore historic gardens, building will employ a range of crafts people while internal decorations may use gilders and glaziers.

Museums, libraries and archives have an important role to play too. Museums often keep alive very specialist skills, e.g. rural life museums demonstrating crafts such as pole lathe wood turning, brush making, charcoal burning; science museums keeping alive old machinery and industrial process.

Libraries and archives are the repository of documentary and pictorial evidence of styles and traditions of craft work.

Today of course, we are focussing the built heritage and the work of the CITB-ConstructionSkills National Heritage Training Group. Having read the research you published in July, I realise too that this is an agenda that is driven by regional variation.

Tessa noted in her recent essay ‘Better Places to Live’ the distinctive regional styles and variations of England’s historic buildings and structures. We celebrate these as defining features of our landscapes and townscapes, contributing to our sense of place.

But at the same time, we must recognise that they bring the additional challenge of providing the necessary skills on a regional basis, while ensuring consistency of approach. This is not something we can fix from the ivory towers of Government in London.

What has impressed me most thus far is the enthusiastic way you are developing the necessary structures to drive this agenda. You have recognised the important role of the Sector Skills Councils in determining the future skills needs and of the individuals that work in your sector.

CITB-ConstructionSkills has taken a lead role in producing Sector Skills Agreements. The creation of the National Heritage Training Group in partnership with English Heritage and the wider sector, as well as the Sector Skills Agreement signed between CITB and English Heritage in November 2004 puts you ahead of many others.

Your research provides evidence to allow you to work with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the Learning and Skills Councils and others to determine the level of educational provision required to ensure a steady flow of appropriately qualified new entrants to the sector. And to persuade the RDAs and others that this needs to be a priority for funding. This momentum is underpinned by an increased recognition of the importance of vocational qualifications, most recently in the DfES Skills White Paper.

The time is right, but we will not redress the balance over night. I am therefore particular delighted that the Heritage Lottery Fund has again taken an innovative approach by supporting the training of new apprentices as part of capital works. These range from two new stonemasons at Durham Cathedral to a young boat building apprentice at Chichester harbour. And its new bursary schemes are set to provide a wide range of opportunities. This support will make an enormous difference in the short term and will give us very practical examples to inform the longer term solutions.

At the same time, I am keen to hear your ideas about what more we can do to demonstrate to young men and women from all backgrounds that there are worthwhile and lucrative careers open to them if they opt for training in heritage skills.

We need more diversity in the heritage sector workforce as a whole. It seems to me that one very practical way to start tackling that is to promote careers in the heritage industry.

I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to you, Your Royal Highness, for your enthusiasm and passion for this agenda. There is clearly a need for action if we are to retain the skills needed to pass on our built heritage in good shape to future generations.

A cause as challenging as this needs a champion to keep it on everyone’s agenda. You are just that. Our vision has a greater chance of success thanks to your interest and involvement.