The Club were happy to be invited to meet with Cadw, the Welsh heritage body, last week. Since the launch of our campaign in Wales earlier this year we have been keen to build a stronger relationship with Cadw, so we travelled out to Cardiff for our first meeting with them. We had a really positive and wide ranging discussion about the Welsh heritage landscape. As a government body, Cadw have a slightly different view of the system than ourselves or our members, and it was really good to get their input. We were happy to discuss options
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The Club are happy to report that our efforts to form a Cross Party Group in the Welsh Assembly have been successful. We visited the Assembly in Cardiff on the 30th of April to meet with Dr Dai Lloyd AM of Plaid Cymru. His support, along with Janet Finch-Saunders of the Welsh Conservatives and Mike Hedges of the Labour party means that we can move ahead with an initial meeting, and as a result the group can be officially recognised. This is a great success both for our members in Wales as well as in the whole UK. It’s extremely
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We are happy to report that the Club has been invited to the Mid and West Wales Conservation Officers Forum. We’ll be attending to meet the heritage professionals who are at the forefront of listed building consent applications in the region, and to discuss the challenges that they face working in the present system. While the Club always has our members interests very much at heart, we see councils and planning officials very much as our partners in creating reforms. High costs for owners lead to high costs for councils, and we believe we can find common sense answers to
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We’re happy to report our meeting with Kirsty Williams, AM for Brecon and Welsh Minister for Education. We took a drive up to Brecon on Friday the 5th and met to discuss the challenges facing listed building owners today. Brecon has over 500 listed buildings within a mile of the town centre, including the Liberal Democrat offices we met at, so clearly listed buildings are a big deal. We were really happy to see Kirsty already had a good understanding of the issues that listed building owners face and was keen to work towards helping them. While she is a
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The Club’s lobbying work in Wales is already being taken seriously, both by AMs and the Welsh Government. After writing to the minister for housing, Julie James, we received an official response from the government. Dafydd Elis-Thomas, deputy minister for culture and tourism, responded to our letter enquiring about the government’s policy on listed buildings. We are gratified to discover that the Welsh government takes these issues seriously, and last year commissioned a report into planning and consent to discuss how to better administer building consent. The Club has responded with our own feedback to the report, as well as
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Today is St David’s day, which makes it the perfect time to announce the launch of our lobbying efforts in Wales. We have been preparing the ground for a few weeks, but today marks the start of our official campaign. Following the same approach as in England, we are campaigning for the creation of a Cross Party Group on Listed Properties within the Welsh Assembly, as a line of communication between our members and Assembly Members. Today we will be contacting a dozen AMs asking them to support a CPG, with more to follow in the coming week. Today we
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