CHAIRMAN’S REPORT
Professor Emeritus Cliff Hague
The year has been dominated
by Our Place in Time: The Historic
Environment Strategy for Scotland.
As Chair of BEFS I have been invited
to be a member of the Historic
Environment Operational Group
which is to manage the delivery
of the Strategy, and of the Scottish
Historic Environment Forum which
provides the strategic oversight.
DIRECTOR’S REPORT
John Pelan
The BEFS Congress in October
2013, ‘Mainstreaming the Historic
Environment’, set the theme for
the year. Through our congress,
workshops and policy consultations
we repeatedly emphasised the
cultural, social and economic value
of Scotland’s historic environment.
The publication of Our Place in Time:
The Historic Environment Strategy
for Scotland and the introduction
to Parliament of the Bill to merge
The
Strategy
belongs
to
Scotland not just to the Scottish
Government. I was asked by the
Historic Environment Policy Unit of
the Scottish Government to lead
the Workstream on how to measure
success of the Strategy. This was a
challenging task, notwithstanding
the support provided by members
of the Workstream, who were drawn
from BEFS’s member organisations
and beyond. I am grateful to Jo
Robertson for the support she
provided. The consultation on
our report is expected to begin in
November, and the performance
management framework should
become effective next April.
This work raises some questions
for BEFS as we look to the future.
I welcome co-production as an
approach to governance in the
sector, but it can pose problems to
organisations that have a small staff,
and prior commitments for the use
of that human resource.
Historic Scotland and RCAHMS
provided opportunities to discuss
and debate historic environment
issues on the floor of the Scottish
Parliament. We convened a
Taskforce to monitor the Bill as it
moved through Parliament, gave
written and oral evidence and
suggested key ‘asks’ for the new
organisation to deliver. We also
hosted a meeting of the Cross Party
Group on Architecture and Place
Group to debate the Strategy as
part of our ongoing commitment to
help deliver its strategic objectives.
2013/14 has also been a year of
expansion for BEFS. We have seen
our membership base grow with
four new Associates, two new
Academic Associates and our
first Individual Associates. While
support from Historic Scotland is
ongoing we have also looked at our
other income-generation models
including the Heritage Lottery Fund
and event sponsorship.
We have delivered a full range of
workshops and events including
I have taken our Small Towns work
further, with a report on Cupar, Fife,
and a visit to Forfar that resulted
in traders developing a website
to support the town centre. I have
given presentations of our Small
Towns work in Leuven and in
Johannesburg and had an article
about it published (in Chinese) in an
international Chinese journal, and
will make a further presentation at
Nanjing at the end of November. I
also delivered a keynote address at
the Raymond Lemaire International
Centre for Conservation. In addition,
I have had promising discussions
with Architecture and Design
Scotland about ways to connect
research to practitioner needs.
My three-year term of office as BEFS
Chair is now up, and I am standing
down. I wish my successor well,
and I thank BEFS devoted staff for
all their support.
a very successful annual lecture
with Scotland’s then Chief Medical
Officer, Sir Harry Burns, and an
event on placemaking hosted by
our Chairman. We also launched a
report on the findings of our Small
Towns Initiative in Helensburgh in
autumn 2013. We hope to build
on these events as part of a wider
‘BEFS Plus’ agenda, driven by the
Architecture and Place Group.
Our core function remains the
delivery of strategic intermediary
functions for the historic and wider
built environment. This is what
BEFS does best: acting as a hub for
debate and dialogue and a channel
for communication between the
sector and government, national
and local. No other organisation in
Scotland brings together archi tects,
planners, archaeologists, surveyors,
academics,
conservation
and
environment professionals and
representatives of the voluntary
sector to meet and discuss matters
of shared interest.