Kay Andrews, the chairwoman of English Heritage, may have lived in Lewes in East Sussex for the past 40 years, but you can still hear her Welsh roots in her accent.
And it’s those early years growing up in the industrial valleys that had the strongest impression in terms of her interest in heritage.
“I grew up virtually within site of an old blast furnace in Tredegar and also with the whole paraphernalia of Victorian non-conformism around the very tightly knit communities with their chapels and rituals, and you become very influenced by that,” she says.
“So I have always had a completely instinctive feel for what makes us what we are and what makes our communities.”
Andrews started her four-year term as chair of English Heritage in 2009 and is the first woman to do the job. Before this she held a number of political posts, including a seven-year spell as policy adviser to former Labour party leader Neil Kinnock, who grew up in the same area of south Wales.
Andrews joined the Labour government in 2002 and had a range of roles including parliamentary undersecretary of state at the Department for Communities and Local Government from 2005 until May 2009.
“English Heritage is the government’s statutory adviser and I know how important it is to maintain trust, to understand the complexities of government and to work with them in a way that helps to solve their problems. It is about being very straight and strong but also being sensitive to the sort of challenges that all governments face. Having been a minister helps me to do that.”
But it’s challenging to be working with a relatively new government and its policy objectives. One of English Heritage’s concerns is the impact of planning proposals that many in the sector fear will lead to a reduction in heritage protection. The National Trust has been very vocal in its opposition to these changes.
Dealing with the cuts
As well as new policies, English Heritage is having to deal with being hit hard by the government’s spending cuts. The organisation has had a 32% cut in real terms of the money it is getting from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport from 2011-15.
In his October 2010 letter to Andrews outlining the cuts, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt also said he expected English Heritage to reduce the money it spends on administration by 50% while at the same time increasing its self-generated income.
But Andrews believes a clearer focus on its core areas of work means that the organisation can come out of this stronger. “We took a hard hit and not one we expected and it has meant we have made some difficult choices,” she says.
“But I’m very pleased to say that the choices we made were ones that actually strengthened our ability to do the job we are charged with doing.”
English Heritage’s strategy is to focus on the statutory advice it gives local authorities and government and to make sure it can fulfil its key role in terms of protecting heritage. Hunt had asked the organisation to concentrate on areas where it “provides a distinctive service” and to reduce areas of overlap with other bodies.
So English Heritage has started working more closely with organisations such as the Heritage Lottery Fund, which has stepped in to fill the funding gap left by English Heritage’s decision to withdraw most of its contribution for new awards under the Repair Grants for Places of Worship scheme.
With its own properties, English Heritage has reduced winter opening hours at most of the 420 sites and monuments that it’s responsible for. But it has also tried to add something by opening 14 more properties during the winter and offering more weekend activities.
It is also focusing investment on properties where it will get the greatest return. “We have had to decide how we can best invest in properties that generate an income for us but which also make a fabulous impression on visitors,” says Andrews.
This has meant spending money on properties such as Audley End in Essex and Dover Castle, Kent, where an exhibition opened in June that recreated the drama of the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation in the secret wartime tunnels where the rescue was masterminded.
More recently, English Heritage has completed the restoration of the gardens at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. Projects that will open next year include schemes at Housesteads Roman Fort in Northumberland; Carlisle Castle in Cumbria; and Wellington Arch in London. Kenwood House in north London will close in summer 2012 for over a year for a repair and conservation programme.
But English Heritage’s most high-profile project is at Stonehenge, where there is a long-running plan to replace inadequate visitor facilities and to lessen the intrusion of roads and traffic on the site.
“One of our great challenges, which I’m sure will come to fruition next year, is to present Stonehenge in a way that is appropriate for one of the world’s great monuments,” says Andrews.
“For far too long it has been rundown and compromised by a lack of resources and a lack of clarity about what is the best thing to do.”
The £27m project moved a step closer in November when the government agreed that sections of two roads running near the stones can be closed to traffic. The aim is to reduce the number of vehicles travelling directly past the stones and to ease congestion.
Andrews says that one of the important elements of the Stonehenge project is the partnerships that English Heritage has created with local museums to provide interpretation and to broaden the visitor experience.
“It is going to be a genuine partnership, and I think it will be good for our scholars, good for the museums and good for the visitors,” says Andrews.
English Heritage has also been working with Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery on a joint project at Carlisle Castle, and with Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery on the Staffordshire Hoard.
“I’m very ambitious for people to get excited about what history means today, and these partnerships will make it easier for that to happen,” she says.
Andrews says reaching new audiences is vital for English Heritage, as it is for museums. But this has been made more difficult following the organisation’ decision last year to close its outreach department.
“To our great sorrow we had to suspend that but we still have a very strong education programme and a brilliant education team. They are looking to build the sorts of partnerships with schools and other learning authorities that will get people really fired up and keep them coming into the properties.”
Some in the sector feel there is a danger of English Heritage turning its back on its very successful grassroots work.
“While many English Heritage properties are leading the field in terms of showing how historic places can be brought back to life, other recent developments – such as the abolition of their outreach department – are a cause for concern,” says Ben Cowell, acting external affairs director at the National Trust and author of The Heritage Obsession.
“It would be a shame if English Heritage retreated into a purist view of heritage as a specialist professional concern, and not as something that is integral to our daily life.”
However, Cowell feels Andrews does not have an elitist view of heritage and her experience and outlook are benefiting English Heritage greatly.
“Her ministerial experience helps her to see readily how the historic environment can play its part in mainstream government policy,” he says. “Her challenge will be to help English Heritage find its unique role and voice at a time of savage cuts.”
Despite the financial challenges her organisation faces, which has led to a loss of staff and expertise, Andrews is keen to move forward and for the importance of heritage to be better recognised.
“One of the things we have not quite got right in this country is articulating the economic case for heritage. We somehow have to get people to understand that this is not an added extra it is a priority and it is part of the solution to our economic challenge and our social challenge. I feel that very passionately.
“Heritage is also fun,” she adds. “It is what makes us get up in the morning.”
English Heritage is the government’s statutory adviser on the historic environment.
In 2010-11 it received about three-quarters of its income, £129.9m, from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in the form of grant-in-aid.
This was cut in the 2010 comprehensive spending review and by the end of the four-year spending review period in 2014/15 it will receive about two-thirds of its income from the DCMS. The aim is to generate the rest from membership, properties and fundraising.
English Heritage membership has risen from 445,000 in 2001 to 758,000 in 2010. Last year, more than 11 million people visited the 420 sites and collections in its care.
It gives about £34m in grants each year and advises on 17,000 planning, listed building and other associated consent cases each year. English Heritage employs about 2,000 people FTE.
Elizabeth (Kay) Andrews was born in 1943 in Newport, south Wales. She was given an OBE in 1998 and was awarded a life peerage in 2000, when she became Baroness Andrews.
She served as parliamentary undersecretary of state at the Department for Communities and Local Government from 2005 until 2009. Prior to that she was a government whip and spokeswoman in the House of Lords for health, work and pensions, and education and skills (2003-2005).
She was a fellow of the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University from 1968 to 1970 and a parliamentary clerk in the House of Commons from 1970 to 1985.
She was a policy adviser to Neil Kinnock when he was leader of the opposition from 1985 until 1992. From 1992 to 2002, she was the director of Education Extra, a national charity for out-of-school learning that she founded.
Andrews was appointed chairwoman of English Heritage in July 2009.
And it’s those early years growing up in the industrial valleys that had the strongest impression in terms of her interest in heritage.
“I grew up virtually within site of an old blast furnace in Tredegar and also with the whole paraphernalia of Victorian non-conformism around the very tightly knit communities with their chapels and rituals, and you become very influenced by that,” she says.
“So I have always had a completely instinctive feel for what makes us what we are and what makes our communities.”
Andrews started her four-year term as chair of English Heritage in 2009 and is the first woman to do the job. Before this she held a number of political posts, including a seven-year spell as policy adviser to former Labour party leader Neil Kinnock, who grew up in the same area of south Wales.
Andrews joined the Labour government in 2002 and had a range of roles including parliamentary undersecretary of state at the Department for Communities and Local Government from 2005 until May 2009.
“English Heritage is the government’s statutory adviser and I know how important it is to maintain trust, to understand the complexities of government and to work with them in a way that helps to solve their problems. It is about being very straight and strong but also being sensitive to the sort of challenges that all governments face. Having been a minister helps me to do that.”
But it’s challenging to be working with a relatively new government and its policy objectives. One of English Heritage’s concerns is the impact of planning proposals that many in the sector fear will lead to a reduction in heritage protection. The National Trust has been very vocal in its opposition to these changes.
Dealing with the cuts
As well as new policies, English Heritage is having to deal with being hit hard by the government’s spending cuts. The organisation has had a 32% cut in real terms of the money it is getting from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport from 2011-15.
In his October 2010 letter to Andrews outlining the cuts, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt also said he expected English Heritage to reduce the money it spends on administration by 50% while at the same time increasing its self-generated income.
But Andrews believes a clearer focus on its core areas of work means that the organisation can come out of this stronger. “We took a hard hit and not one we expected and it has meant we have made some difficult choices,” she says.
“But I’m very pleased to say that the choices we made were ones that actually strengthened our ability to do the job we are charged with doing.”
English Heritage’s strategy is to focus on the statutory advice it gives local authorities and government and to make sure it can fulfil its key role in terms of protecting heritage. Hunt had asked the organisation to concentrate on areas where it “provides a distinctive service” and to reduce areas of overlap with other bodies.
So English Heritage has started working more closely with organisations such as the Heritage Lottery Fund, which has stepped in to fill the funding gap left by English Heritage’s decision to withdraw most of its contribution for new awards under the Repair Grants for Places of Worship scheme.
With its own properties, English Heritage has reduced winter opening hours at most of the 420 sites and monuments that it’s responsible for. But it has also tried to add something by opening 14 more properties during the winter and offering more weekend activities.
It is also focusing investment on properties where it will get the greatest return. “We have had to decide how we can best invest in properties that generate an income for us but which also make a fabulous impression on visitors,” says Andrews.
This has meant spending money on properties such as Audley End in Essex and Dover Castle, Kent, where an exhibition opened in June that recreated the drama of the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation in the secret wartime tunnels where the rescue was masterminded.
More recently, English Heritage has completed the restoration of the gardens at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. Projects that will open next year include schemes at Housesteads Roman Fort in Northumberland; Carlisle Castle in Cumbria; and Wellington Arch in London. Kenwood House in north London will close in summer 2012 for over a year for a repair and conservation programme.
But English Heritage’s most high-profile project is at Stonehenge, where there is a long-running plan to replace inadequate visitor facilities and to lessen the intrusion of roads and traffic on the site.
“One of our great challenges, which I’m sure will come to fruition next year, is to present Stonehenge in a way that is appropriate for one of the world’s great monuments,” says Andrews.
“For far too long it has been rundown and compromised by a lack of resources and a lack of clarity about what is the best thing to do.”
The £27m project moved a step closer in November when the government agreed that sections of two roads running near the stones can be closed to traffic. The aim is to reduce the number of vehicles travelling directly past the stones and to ease congestion.
Andrews says that one of the important elements of the Stonehenge project is the partnerships that English Heritage has created with local museums to provide interpretation and to broaden the visitor experience.
“It is going to be a genuine partnership, and I think it will be good for our scholars, good for the museums and good for the visitors,” says Andrews.
English Heritage has also been working with Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery on a joint project at Carlisle Castle, and with Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery on the Staffordshire Hoard.
“I’m very ambitious for people to get excited about what history means today, and these partnerships will make it easier for that to happen,” she says.
Andrews says reaching new audiences is vital for English Heritage, as it is for museums. But this has been made more difficult following the organisation’ decision last year to close its outreach department.
“To our great sorrow we had to suspend that but we still have a very strong education programme and a brilliant education team. They are looking to build the sorts of partnerships with schools and other learning authorities that will get people really fired up and keep them coming into the properties.”
Some in the sector feel there is a danger of English Heritage turning its back on its very successful grassroots work.
“While many English Heritage properties are leading the field in terms of showing how historic places can be brought back to life, other recent developments – such as the abolition of their outreach department – are a cause for concern,” says Ben Cowell, acting external affairs director at the National Trust and author of The Heritage Obsession.
“It would be a shame if English Heritage retreated into a purist view of heritage as a specialist professional concern, and not as something that is integral to our daily life.”
However, Cowell feels Andrews does not have an elitist view of heritage and her experience and outlook are benefiting English Heritage greatly.
“Her ministerial experience helps her to see readily how the historic environment can play its part in mainstream government policy,” he says. “Her challenge will be to help English Heritage find its unique role and voice at a time of savage cuts.”
Despite the financial challenges her organisation faces, which has led to a loss of staff and expertise, Andrews is keen to move forward and for the importance of heritage to be better recognised.
“One of the things we have not quite got right in this country is articulating the economic case for heritage. We somehow have to get people to understand that this is not an added extra it is a priority and it is part of the solution to our economic challenge and our social challenge. I feel that very passionately.
“Heritage is also fun,” she adds. “It is what makes us get up in the morning.”
English Heritage at a glance
English Heritage is the government’s statutory adviser on the historic environment.
In 2010-11 it received about three-quarters of its income, £129.9m, from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in the form of grant-in-aid.
This was cut in the 2010 comprehensive spending review and by the end of the four-year spending review period in 2014/15 it will receive about two-thirds of its income from the DCMS. The aim is to generate the rest from membership, properties and fundraising.
English Heritage membership has risen from 445,000 in 2001 to 758,000 in 2010. Last year, more than 11 million people visited the 420 sites and collections in its care.
It gives about £34m in grants each year and advises on 17,000 planning, listed building and other associated consent cases each year. English Heritage employs about 2,000 people FTE.
Baroness Kay Andrews at a glance
Elizabeth (Kay) Andrews was born in 1943 in Newport, south Wales. She was given an OBE in 1998 and was awarded a life peerage in 2000, when she became Baroness Andrews.
She served as parliamentary undersecretary of state at the Department for Communities and Local Government from 2005 until 2009. Prior to that she was a government whip and spokeswoman in the House of Lords for health, work and pensions, and education and skills (2003-2005).
She was a fellow of the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University from 1968 to 1970 and a parliamentary clerk in the House of Commons from 1970 to 1985.
She was a policy adviser to Neil Kinnock when he was leader of the opposition from 1985 until 1992. From 1992 to 2002, she was the director of Education Extra, a national charity for out-of-school learning that she founded.
Andrews was appointed chairwoman of English Heritage in July 2009.