Formal assessment of heritage needed

DEAR Editor, Councillor Barry Henley’s recent piece regarding his approach to post-war development in this city (‘I’m no philistine’, Post, February 16) appears to be more about his personal opinions rather than an argument grounded in any expertise and knowledge of our built heritage – post-war or otherwise.

It doesn’t respond to or address the concerns raised recently regarding the retention of our best post-war developments.

Our built heritage, irrespective of the period in which it was constructed, is far too important to be subjectively demolished without the knowledge and advice from professionals who have a thorough understanding and expertise in their field.

We need to move the conversation about saving our built heritage on from personal views. We need to remove the subjective opinions and emotion from the debate. We need an open, honest and grounded discussion about our city’s post-war development based upon fact and supported with relevant knowledge and expertise.

It is for that very reason why we have come together to campaign to assess, protect and raise awareness of our city’s post-war built heritage.

To achieve this, we are looking to commission an independent assessment of post-war development within our city. The assessment will be prepared by a panel of experts in the field of post-war development in the city and UK.

We propose that it will firstly identify developments in the city and then secondly assess their quality and whether they are of special interest to the post-war development – locally and nationally.

Those that are identified as being of special interest would be eligible for being Locally Listed or Statutory Listed. The latter will sufficiently protect the best of our post-war development for future generations.

The result of the assessment may be that no post-war developments are identified that meet the high standards expected.

But it could equally identify 100 developments – or maybe more... The problem is that at the moment, all post-war developments are being subjectively tarred with the same brush and so we could be losing some of the most important post-war developments in the city and country.

A number of years ago, the Jewellery Quarter was little understood. A similar independent assessment of the area was carried out that identified the uniqueness of the area and a significant number of buildings were locally and statutory listed. The area is without a