Aimée L Felton 2012

93 NINE It would seem from the conclusions drawn from this research that in order to achieve truly successful maintenance management strategies, that satisfy both the organisations needs of finance, aesthetics and use alongside the authorities with the protection of significance and fabric- only a truly multi- disciplinary approach can prevail. Maintenance conservation is an integral part of maintaining relevant historic buildings for the future generations, so must simultaneously utilise skills and knowledge base from across society. Encouragement is needed to prevent organisations making decisions regarding historic buildings on immediate face value and encourage longer term perspectives. In order to achieve best practice principles suitable for non-heritage organisations with appropriate acknowledgement of aesthetics, sustainability, and finance, improved guidance is required emphasising the benefits of owning historic buildings to be more than just financial gain. An improved system of not for profit organisations similar to BPTs may help to encourage organisations to more accurately assess cultural significance and its importance, in turn increasing the perception of historic building ownership. This may be temporarily solved by organisations withmultiple properties across the country improving relations with local authority conservation officers, utilising existing knowledge within the area, thus providing the organisation with the level of information required without resorting to expensive external contractors. Pre-planning meetings could also help to identify problems with proposals before money is wasted on multiple submissions or appeals. In the long term improved software tailored to historic building data collection and individual organisational policies could help eliminate inefficiencies in management time whilst existing information management databases need to be slimmed down segregating historic buildings from the portfolio, to contain Chapter Nine - Conclusion Nine•Three A multi-disciplinary approach Aimee Felton