Byrne challenged by Hemming over Historic Buildings in West Midlands

8.17.36pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 22nd Aug 2007

John Hemming MP, Shadow Minister for the West Midlands, has written to challenge Liam Byrne to act to save historic buildings in the West Midlands before they are lost forever.

An analysis performed by the Liberal Democrats based upon English Heritage's Register of Buildings at Risk has found 179 buildings with a Conservation Deficit of £65 Million Pounds in the West Midlands.

"This includes Grade II* listed buildings and Scheduled Ancient Monuments as well as Grade I listed buildings", said John Hemming.

Buildings such as Moseley Road swimming pool in Birmingham, Wigmore Abbey in Herefordshire, Charlecotte Furnace in Shropshire and the city Walls in Worcester appear on the list.

"Liam Byrne is the Shadow Minister for the West Midlands. We need to know what is being done by him to prevent the decay and damage to our Mercian heritage.

"English Heritage have suffered a big drop in the amount of money nationally the government provides to support our heritage," said John Hemming. "In 1999, the cash available for these buildings was £6.6 million. Last year that dropped to £4.4 million.

"In recent years the funding in the West Midlands (secular grant) has been cut by 43% in cash terms since 2003/4. Funding in 03/04 was £1623K, 04/05 was £1260K, 05/06 was £1373K, 06/07 was £1080K and 07/08 is £925K."

"Building and repair costs are rising and without government action to stop the rot now, it may become too expensive to save some of our great historic buildings that at the moment are crumbling away.

"One measure the government can take is to lower the VAT charged on renovating or extending homes and buildings. It is unfair that when a building is converted into housing or is renovated or extended, VAT has to be paid at the full rate on the building materials.

"Yet at the same time, a house that is built from scratch on a greenfield site is charged no VAT at all. The effect is to encourage more new houses to be build in greenfield areas and to make it more expensive to improve and renovate existing buildings.

"Our proposal will make it cheaper for many people who own older, historic buildings to carry out repairs and renovation. And we would pay for this by charging the same lower rate of VAT on materials used in building new houses built on greenfield sites.

"This will also mean owners of historic buildings rely less on grants from the government to improve and protect their property. We believe buildings here in the West Midlands would benefit greatly from this."