Aimée L Felton 2012

51 Five•Four Financial disincentive FIVE Individual and corporate owners stubbornly refuse to give maintenance the appropriate priority. Any money, time and effort spent on mundane tasks, does not contribute to income, let alone profit. It is this ignorance, of the medium to long term savings that regular work can provide as illustrated in BS 7913 (1998), this is all down to owners not seeing an ‘accountable’ return of any work carried out (MoH. 2004). Financial assistance in the UK is mostly orientated around varying grant regimes, with various charitable bodies having some access to a range of funding sources, whether low interest loans or grant assistance to prevent permanent damage and deterioration of buildings. Buildings at Risk (Pendlebury, J. 2001 as cited in Pickard, R. 2001:p306) and various Building Preservation Trust (BPTs) now place great emphasis upon catching buildings at an early stage of disrepair, in order to provide as much assistance to owners as possible. Dr Simon Thurley, (DCMS. 2008: evidence 48), current CEO of English Heritage, has argued that an inaccurate perception of the complexity of the English planning system, especially listed building consent, is perceived to be unreasonable and inconsistent by historic building owners or prospective owners. It can be surmised that this negative attitude is leading to buildings decaying and losing value because their owners think they cannot get consent to carry out works - positively discouraging potential buyers from owning heritage at all. Whilst EH blames uninformed opinions of owners, the organisation itself (as primary administrator of the existing heritage protection regime on behalf of the government) has done little to assist or promote good maintenance to any typology of listed building, through guidance, legislation or increased awareness.The catalogue of recipients’ of grants shows that English Heritage prefers to fund ‘eye-catching’ major projects of higher grades (EH. Chapter Five- Statutory and Policy Aimee Felton