18 YEARBOOK 2023 younger conservation professionals, presented the strongest testament to the vitality of the IHBC in the 21st century. Mindful as ever of the central roles for our branches and volunteers in that future, the board has continued to allocate resources to extend support there. Our new volunteer support, led by Jude Wheeler, now as our branch liaison officer, offers strategic updates, guidance and capacity to branch committees and events, as well as a new tie between the IHBC’s volunteers and their national office. We also extended support for members’ practice and career progress with consultant services supplied by Anna (Angharad) Hart, specifically focussed on training and applications. Anna’s recently-launched suite of forms, guidance and services to help in affiliate applications has already impressed lead volunteers and further clarified the purpose behind the new arrangements. The new thinking displayed there, including a screencast video and flexible online surgeries for applicants, is a sign of the future for the other service improvements seen already and on the way. These range from centrally supported local training via our branches to new practice areas linked to climate change issues, both ‘stand-alone’ as IHBC and in partnerships. The IHBC also took full advantage of the quieter spells in Covid to extend our conservation advocacy in the political field through the UK-wide, IHBC-supported and Westminsterbased All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Conservation, Places and People. That select group of parliamentarians opened its first inquiry in 2020 by interrogating an avowedly catch-all theme: ‘the value of the historic environment and how it can help to promote growth and regeneration’. Supported by the IHBC through our independent consultant David Blackman, the inquiry’s oral sessions were led from October 2021 by the newly elected APPG Chair James Grundy MP. Delayed by the pandemic, the launch of the report in December 2022 still laid a critical foundation for our future advocacy and research. The publication was also supported in part by our 25th anniversary programme, IHBC25, and our CREATIVE Conservation Fund, with both underpinning the first IHBC-led event in Westminster. The current yearbook sits at the end of our IHBC25 programme, and so marks in part the conclusion of the 25th anniversary of the Institute’s founding in 1997. Reflecting the IHBC’s default bottom-up approach for IHBC25, branches were encouraged to propose and bid for local and national anniversary initiatives. Through the National Office and Committees project, work has included a themed issue of Context, development programmes such as an upgraded archiving capacity, updates to key practice statements, including of our Competences and our Conservation Professional Practice Principles and much more. All were supported by the simple and functional web resource and social media interface at #IHBC25. Our anniversary year, even more than marking a moment in time, seems to have mostly tied our past to our future. The ongoing modernisation of governance, centred on the new Articles and Corporate Plan adopted at the 2020 AGM, has refined the best parts of our corporate legacies into a robust and modern entity fit for the ever-evident travails of the 21st century. These developments have also, ever more clearly, laid the foundation for the exploration (for now, no more than that) of a petition for the IHBC to become a chartered professional body. Chartering has loomed large, if mostly silently, across the anniversary year, as we commenced the recently launched consultation on the IHBC submitting a petition for charter. Before consulting on that, as per our Corporate Plan, we needed to know as much as we usefully could about the related facts and issues. So from mid2022 we enquired informally across our networks and later with the Privy Council Office, the administrative lead and helpful guide on the process. We also planned our own research and by December 2022 we had an outline brief agreed with consultant David Williams, now best known to readers through the recording of his presentation on the chartering process to the IHBC’s March Council. By the time you read this, our webbased consultation hub, inspired as anyone might guess by our IHBC25 hub, should be live and open to research, comment, interrogation and engagement. As a petition consultation hub, this should serve to inform our members, our networks and our stakeholders of the issues and impacts at play and in prospect, as well as take comments, concerns and suggestions to inform future decisions. Fittingly, the council that launched the petition consultation also marked the formal end of our 25th anniversary programme. This commences the most momentous discussions on our status since before 1997 (when we were looking at incorporating our association of friends and colleagues as a charity and professional body). Now over 25 years later we find ourselves looking at our future once again, while still seeking lessons from our past. Seán O’Reilly is the Director of IHBC (director@ihbc.org.uk), joining in 2005 after working at the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland. He has written, contributed to and edited numerous publications in architectural history and conservation. The launch of The Value of Heritage in the Palace of Westminster, the first report of the APPG on Conservation, Places and People, with David McDonald (IHBC), Lizzie Glithero-West (Heritage Alliance), James Grundy MP (APPG Chair), Duncan Wilson OBE (Historic England) and David Tittle (Heritage Trust Network)
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