At the Annual General Meeting of Historic Houses [Alliance member], the Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism, Michael Ellis gave a speech on the contribution of property owners in the protection of British historic environment.
Historic buildings also contribute significantly to UK economy especially because of tourism and this contributes also to UK soft power, particularly important in this delicate moment of the UK leaving the EU. This has been recently underlined by Historic England and the Historic Environment Forum’s Heritage and the Economy 2018 report. The Government commitment to support historic buildings is reflected in the Autumn Budget 2018, which allocated £55 million to the regeneration of high street areas.
A hot topic covered by the speech is the (possible) tax relief on repair and maintenance of the historic houses, and particularly the income tax burden on Heritage Maintenance Funds. This was recently the subject of a detailed cost-benefit analysis commissioned by Historic Houses and will be the subject of a meeting with the Treasury soon.
The Minister also pointed out that living in better and beautiful places, in a historic environment, is positive for our communities and their wellbeing. The Heritage Alliance will be producing a report on this topic soon.