Craft Industry: Support

Lord Lemos Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of English Heritage. As well as looking after 400 of the nation’s most important heritage sites, we are one of the biggest investors in building conservation and heritage management in the UK, so English Heritage is well placed to observe and comment on the state of the heritage skills world.

I am sorry to say that it is not good news. For stone-masonry, roofing and thatching, joinery and metalwork, the demand for traditional heritage skills greatly outstrips the availability of people with those skills. For specialist interventions on heritage buildings, such as flint-knapping, which involves repairing a built form and which is no longer practised in new buildings, we are literally at the end of the line. There are few or no new entrants and hardly any training opportunities to continue this ancient skill.

Horticulture in historic gardens is a specialist and skilled activity—a heritage skill of its own—but it is also an underpopulated profession. At English Heritage, we are proud to have run the Historic and Botanic Garden Training Programme—a difficult phrase to say; it is better known as heebie-jeebies—with the support of the National Garden Scheme. Over almost 20 years, we have supported more than 300 trainees, who are now employed across the heritage world. The vast majority of our horticulture trainees have gone on to be highly skilled gardeners at some of the most high-profile historic gardens in the UK and abroad. Much of the credit for this goes to our soon-to-retire head gardener, John Watkins, who engineered this remarkable revival.

The most recent addition to our portfolio of historic properties is Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings. This was the first multi-storey iron-framed building in the world and therefore can claim the title of being the grandparent of the skyscraper.

Between 2017 and 2020, Historic England delivered a programme of heritage skills activities supported by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation. Work placements, site tours and training events were targeted at all levels, from students to industry professionals. We want a similar commitment to heritage skills training in the delivery of all large lottery-funded projects like this one.

But these are examples of best practice; the picture across the country is far too fragmented—much more Jackson Pollock than Picasso. It is difficult for enthusiasts to find entry points for specialist heritage skills. There are few placement opportunities in heritage organisations and very little on-the-job learning. Once the training is completed, pathways to employment are ill-defined and hard to identify. Employment opportunities are often small scale, insecure and poorly paid. Short-term funding means that even large organisations such as English Heritage can no longer permanently employ in-house teams of construction professionals, as was the case many years ago.

In allowing professions such as heritage skills to dwindle and die, we have not just deprived the country of important construction skills and neglected the UK’s great heritage assets; we have also allowed traditions, customs and local communities to disperse and almost casually disappear. In your Lordships’ House, we are assiduous about maintaining our own traditions. We should also have a care for the traditions and communities of people less high profile, but, perhaps over the long run, even more important than us.