All must have a say on key site

Sep 13 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

FEW subjects are more sensitive or liable to provoke fierce debate than the perceived undermining of a World Heritage Site.

And so it has proved in the case of Liverpool’s waterfront, with the new Museum of Liverpool and Neptune’s three cheese-wedge shaped granite-faced blocks close to The Strand both being highly contentious developments.

Last October, a mission representing the Paris-based World Heritage Centre arrived in Liverpool to examine con- servationists’ concerns about what was happening on the waterfront.

It raised fears that Unesco – the body responsible for protecting iconic areas – could place the city’s World Heritage Site (WHS) on an "at risk" register, a precursor to having the inscription removed from the list.

However, the Unesco report concluded that schemes such as the Mann Island developments were not an imminent threat to the outstanding value of the WHS. This was met with a sigh of relief by city councillors, and outrage by con- servationists. But, in a caveat to their conclusions, the World Heritage Committee warned potential threats to the WHS’s visual integrity may still exist.

Now a blueprint to protect the site is to be drawn up on the orders of Unesco, as part of an action plan aimed at involving the wider public in schemes earmarked for sensitive sites around the historic waterfront.

Its aim will be to spell out to develop- ers what is allowed in areas falling within the prestige heritage site, as well as the buffer zone around the WHS.

Liverpool will now be used by the Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport as a case study to analyse Unesco’s approach to the preser- vation of historic urban landscapes.

It is important that everybody is given a chance to have their say on the issue of protecting our waterfront – including the voluntary heritage groups.

This would meet one of Unesco’s key recommendations – that local communities should be fully involved, with arguments for and against new schemes aired publicly to ensure more informed decision making.