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Heritage

I entirely concur. The Scottish Parliament should pay far more attention to the metrical psalms. As long as I am not asked to be nice about them, I shall not mind. I turn to another very important part of our built heritage: the rural heritage of agricultural buildings, particularly listed barns. At the end of last year, my district council’s planning authority put out a press release headed ““Farmer Fined for Demolishing Listed Barn””:"““A farmer who demolished a 17th century Grade II listed barn in Winterbourne Gunner has been fined £12,000 with £2,500 costs by Salisbury magistrates.””" The district council said that that was good because it was serious about looking after our heritage. That is fine, but what happens in a depressed agricultural industry that does not have tuppence to spare, let alone the money to meet very substantial costs for looking after a building of no economic value whatever to the farmer? Such buildings cannot be used for anything; they cannot house machinery, they are not allowed to take the stock because they do not conform to modern standards. It is not possible to get planning permission to turn them into houses or flats for holidaymakers because the planning authority says that they are listed agricultural buildings. Although I commend Salisbury district council for its enthusiasm for maintaining listed barns, I was not alone in thinking that that would not be the end of the story. The following week, the local paper published a letter from Jen Carter of East Gomeldon, under the headline, ““Farmer has his head screwed on””. The letter pointed out that the farmer had saved himself £3,500 by moving in with a bulldozer and knocking the barn down the night before the arrival of contractors sent in by the district council for which he was going to have to fork out £18,000. I do not condone his actions, but I believe that farmers in straitened circumstances cannot be held responsible for the maintenance of their listed barns. I started asking questions, because I wondered whether the problem was extensive. I received a letter from a large local landowner who had a farm on his land where the listed building was one of a group on which he had spent almost £500,000 in the past two years. He told me that the planning authority was trying to persuade him that he needed to spend £76,743 on another listed barn, but that the engineers whom he employed said that the work on that one 19th-century, rebuilt, falling-apart building of no economic value whatever would cost £188,000. I then asked the Minister, in a parliamentary question, how many"““barns and…other agricultural buildings are listed Grade II and above in each county in England.””—[Official Report, 27 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 279W.]" I shall not read out the list, but I discovered that there are 19,937 barns listed at grade II and above and 69,000 listed agricultural buildings, including those barns. This is a national problem with a national price tag. If the Government seriously expect a depressed agricultural industry to spend huge sums of money on those 69,000 agricultural buildings, they have another think coming. The problem is counter-intuitive because the more that local authorities press for barns to be kept up, the more they will be knocked down. We must have a solution. The Department should take the lead and realise that this major part of the English rural heritage needs to be addressed.