Aimée L Felton 2012

10 ONE practice towards the use and care attributed to listed buildings.In pure economic terms, the importance of maintenance cannot be doubted with respect to the correlation to gross domestic product (GDP). Maintenance currently represents 47% of the output of the construction industry and construction in turn represents around an average of 10% of the GDP (National Statistics. 2011). Where representation of maintenance is increasing, the cynosure is the large heritage focused organisations and the stewardship principles in practice, with very little acknowledgement or research in place focusing on listed buildings owned by non-heritage focused organisations. The research will aim to investigate why non-heritage focused organisations, with mixed property portfolios containing at least one historic building, are failing to actively maintain and repair their existing building stock.The barriers preventing effective maintenance will be explored in order to draw conclusions as to why organisations do not consider maintenance a priority and are failing to actively use historic buildings within their ownership. Financial strain, the role of cultural significance and organisational priorities will all be assessed in order to categorise the relevant importance towards maintaining historic buildings in the 21st century. Although the buildings owned by only non- heritage focused organisations within England is a limited sample of the 500,000 buildings on the ‘Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest’ (DCMS. 2010), it is hoped that the research and findings could be applied across the wider selection of privately owned buildings, outside of the remit of either English Heritage or other national heritage focused organisations. One•Two Aims of Research Chapter One - Introduction Aimee Felton