Catherine Dewar and David Tomback from Historic England talk to Steve Randall about the important place that heritage buildings have in our towns and cities

Historic England are the public body that help people care for, enjoy and celebrate England’s spectacular historic environment.

Catherine Dewar is the Climate Change Programme Director at Historic England. She has worked at Historic England for over 18 years.

.. the three days have really brought into focus the importance of reusing buildings and the carbon that’s embodied in those buildings. Of course, we represent Historic England, so we would say that’s important.

But it’s been a joy to hear everybody else saying it. We’ve been talking about this, haven’t we for years? And it’s just a joy to hear everybody else, recognising the importance of doing that, for really important reasons.

With nearly 50 years’ experience, David Tomback is a chartered surveyor. He is the Development Economics Director at Historic England.

His wide remit includes providing in-house commercial property advice; listed building consents especially in connection with enabling development; re-use of redundant historic buildings; and the economics of conservation.

While with Historic England he has been involved in significant economic studies, including “The Investment Performance of Listed Buildings”, and “The Value of Conservation”. Recently David was responsible for “Heritage Works The use of historic buildings in regeneration”

So I echo what Catherine says, historic buildings have been reused for generations. But now more than ever, it’s so important that we recognise that buildings just don’t need to be demolished, they can be reused.

For so many good reasons. We produced together with the British Property Federation and the ICS, a publication called Heritage Works. And I can recommend your listeners having looking that up, because it gives some really good advice.