The National Audit Office has just published a review of the Defence Estate Optimisation (DEO) programme. Aside from the overarching conclusions that the programme isn’t going as well as it might do – in terms of speed, cost, reduced income generation and overall project management and complexity – the more interesting reading comes from a reminder of some of the facts and figures about the defence estate of relevance for heritage management and natural landscape management.
The defence estate comprises 344,200 hectares of land in the UK, which comprises 1.5% of the country’s landmass.
The built estate comprises 75,400 hectares (32% of the overall holding) containing offices, technical facilities, and storage and support for military equipment and inventory. It consists of 900 sites, which have roughly 96,000 buildings including houses, technical assets, such as storage units and training facilities, and other assets such as runways and electrical networks.
In broader landscape management terms, the rural estate comprises 157,500 hectares (68% of the overall holding) and is used for training and ranges. This land includes designated and protected areas including 13 national parks, 33 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and 11 National Scenic Areas.
Around 40% of the Department’s infrastructure is more than 50 years old and it regards 30% as not being in an acceptable condition.
The DEO programme aims for a reduction of the built estate by 30% by 2040.
The Ministry of Defence looks after significant heritage assets in terms of historic buildings/sites and landscapes – the ongoing optimisation and disposals programme presents both challenges and opportunities for its historic environment holdings in terms of ongoing maintenance and renewal needs, survival or protection, and adaptation and change under new management.
I have just arrived back in China for one of my regular trips in my role as Confucius Institute director for Heriot-Watt University. The sheer scale of heritage sites, cultural parks and the effect that scale has on heritage management practice never ceases to fascinate me particularly from the air as I arrive in Beijing. Sadly I didn’t have my camera to hand on this trip as the plane banked around the city from north to south to bring me in to the new Daxing airport, but the visibility was good enough to again identify stretches of the Great Wall to the north, and then a number of urban parks and cultural sites as we got closer to our landing point. Regardless of differences in management philosophies for heritage between the west and the east, one of the major factors that we sometimes fail to really appreciate is the sheer scale for heritage conservation which China faces in both the rural and urban landscape. 
Journal summary: The Journal of Cultural Heritage (JCH) is a multidisciplinary journal of science and technology for studying problems concerning conservation and awareness of cultural heritage in a wide framework. The main purpose of JCH is to publish original papers which comprise previously unpublished data and present innovative methods concerning all scientific aspects related to the knowledge of cultural heritage as well as novel interpretation and theoretical issues related to preservation. The journal is intended to offer a venue to scientists from different disciplines whose common objective is developing and applying scientific methods to improve the research and knowledge on cultural heritage, in particular in the following fields: • Safeguarding, conservation and exploitation of cultural heritage • Heritage management and economic analyses • Computer sciences in cultural heritage • Impact of climate change on cultural heritage and management of the change
Journal Summary: The Journal of Architectural Conservation provides invaluable guidance on policy, practice and technical developments. Encouraging debate on a broad variety of conservation issues, this peer-reviewed Journal with its high academic and professional standards fulfils its ambition to illuminate, question and inform. The journal’s scope is wide-ranging and includes discussion on aesthetics and philosophies; historical influences; project evaluation and control; repair techniques; materials; reuse of buildings; legal issues; inspection, recording and monitoring; management and interpretation; and historic parks and gardens. Journal of Architectural Conservation also offers a valuable resource that includes information on building types; building materials and their conservation; recent case studies; developments in specific construction techniques; and research results from key investigations.
Heritage Futures 