How does HES spend its money?

YOUR recent article on the odd ideas of Historic Environment Scotland (“Castles and heritage sites across Scotland could be left to crumble”, January 30) begs several questions.

First, surely the whole point of preserving/conserving/maintaining a structure is precisely because it has historic or cultural value – ie, “like a museum piece”. Presumably it’s not done simply to collect stone in one place.

Second, if all structures have a “finite life”, then this logically applies to privately-owned listed structures as well as state or council-owned. In which case, how can the state insist that the owner maintains that structure “as is” indefinitely. In other words, what is the point of listed buildings, if their dissolution is only a matter of time, and that time may well be imminent?

Third, I cannot help seeing global warming, in this case, as being a useful bogeyman, rather than a serious problem. The principal destroyer of stonework is frost, so a warming climate should help, not hinder, the maintenance of stone buildings. Coastal sites partially excepted, of course.

Fourth, the figures seem to require some explanation. We are told that HES has a budget of about £100 million (with or without site revenue?), but spends only £8.3m on actual maintenance, including visitor centres. In my ignorance, I’d have assumed the majority of funding would go to the declared objective of preserving Scottish historic sites. Even if we add in the greater sum of £14m in grants to privately-owned buildings and preserved railways (surely a lesser priority than the state properties?), we still have only about a fifth of income actually spent on any building (probably less, as visitor centres, ground maintenance and the like are apparently included with actual building maintenance). Where, exactly, does the remaining £80m go?

Graeme Allan, Keith.