North of England Civic Trust

Reports

HSI - Heritage Skills - the first steps:

This is the first commissioned report by the North East Historic Environment Forum, with financial assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund and English Heritage, to investigate the shortage of heritage skills across the North East region. Although the pilot year primarily focused upon the built heritage, it is acknowledged that there is a need to further diversify this work and integrate strategies and practical initiatives for other heritage professionals and portable heritage at an appropriate time.

The North East has a rich and diverse heritage and its future, along with regional tourism, employment and a sense of place for those who live here, is literally in the hands of those who care for it. The huge burden of ongoing care and maintenance is dependant upon the skills and knowledge of the people who innately understand the materials and have the craftsmanship to undertake the necessary work to discover, maintain, care for and interpret our heritage. There has been long and growing concern at the loss of traditional skills and the impact of that loss on the cultural heritage sector. Along with this, the opportunities to undertake training and employment in this field are also dwindling, therefore creating a skills vacuum.

Over the last fifteen years there has been an ever increasing number of reports by a wide variety of national and regional organisations bemoaning this loss, all listing recommendations but too few focusing upon action and, more importantly, identifying who would ensure the recommendations be implemented. The pilot year of the Heritage Skills Project has demonstrated, through a series of pragmatic partnership programmes, the North East’s ability and desire to provide action. By creating practical opportunities to build regional capacity for training, placements and employment through events programming, awareness raising and brokering partnerships, the region is seen to be dynamic and leading the way.

The hard work starts now! The two year plan outlines how we intend to move from the pilot year project into a sustainable and mainstream initiative, growing and developing partnerships that will enable the North East to develop a flourishing skills base from which to maintain the region’s rich heritage.

Andie Harris

Heritage Skills Co-ordinator, North of England Civic Trust

Context

The Pilot Year

Audience Development Plan

Training Plan

Action Plan 2007-2009

HSI - Heritage Skills - the next steps:

Annual Marketing Plan 2008

Branding Proposal

North East Heritage Skills Symposium:

Executive Summary

National Heritage Training Group:

Two reports by the National Heritage Training Group (NHTG) launched on Tuesday 29 April 2008 at the Prince of Wales's Foundation for the Built Environment highlight serious skills and knowledge gaps affecting specialist workers in England and building professionals working across the UK built heritage sector (links to full reports below).

Encouragingly, the shortage of skilled craftspeople to work on England’s historic buildings has been greatly reduced since the first NHTG report in 2005. However, the future of the five million pre-1919 buildings in England could be at risk, as most of the workforce undertaking repair and maintenance work do not possess all the skills required to do the job properly. Similar knowledge gaps affect the majority of the building professionals who specify, commission and oversee this work across the UK, and this is exacerbated by recruitment difficulties in the professional ranks of the sector.

The Traditional Building Craft Skills in England study, backed by Construction Skills and English Heritage, shows that the shortage of craftspeople in this sector has reduced by 3,000 since 2005, when the NHTG announced a skills shortage of 6,590. The number of craftspeople in the sector is around 109,000, compared to fewer than 90,000 in 2005, but with only 36% percent of contractors working on pre-1919 buildings it is estimated that only 33,000 craftspeople undertake work with traditional materials. While around 16,000 mostly new entrants were identified as requiring some form of traditional building skills training in 2007, the evidence suggests that over two-thirds of the work, of which 67% is for private home-owners, is being carried out by those without the right skills and materials. This is detrimental to the buildings and stores up future problems and unnecessary extra cost to rectify.

The second UK-wide report, Built Heritage Sector Professionals, assessed skills and training of architects, engineers, surveyors, conservation officers and other professionals – the gatekeepers for this sector. However, of the half million professionals working in the UK, only 507 are building conservation-accredited. The report also shows that new recruits may be ill-equipped to replace experienced professionals approaching retirement, creating a vacuum in this part of the industry.

The NHTG will now be working with its partners in the home counties to increase demand for suitably skilled and building-conservation accredited professionals, and to maximise the number of high-quality entrants into the sector, by strengthening building conservation components within mainstream built environment courses. There is also a need to develop flexible training and improve advice and guidance on traditional building skills and materials and link these to the sustainability agenda.