Conserving Historic Buildings through Partnership

We seek to build partnerships with other funding bodies and stakeholders in order to maximise the potential of Northern Ireland to conserve its historic buildings. Our main partnerships are listed below:

NIEA architects are consulted on and consider all Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) grant proposals affecting listed buildings. NIHE in addition seeks agreement that these works have met the required standard before it releases grant aid.

In recent years we have worked closely with NIHE to mitigate the impact of its replacement dwellings grant on non listed vernacular buildings. We are now consulted on all of these proposals and NIHE does not proceed to offer a replacement to those which we have advised are of some architectural or historic merit.

The Department of Social Development (DSD) consult with us in regard to its Urban Development Grants and similar schemes where these seek to restore listed buildings. Grant is not released by DSD until our standards have been met. This helps ensure that conservation works are of an appropriate standard.

We have developed a pilot scheme in partnership with The National Trust in recent years which seeks to test the benefit of small scale maintenance funding once buildings have been restored to a suitable standard. Such an approach is better for conservation because it retains more historic fabric than a cycle of decay and repair and is better economically because it should be cheaper. The pilot scheme is testing these assumptions and the difficult issue of the practical management of such an approach to grant aid.

We have also worked closely with the Trust over many years to support the repair of its historic buildings.

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has many common aims to us and is often helping to support the conservation of buildings also grant aided by us. In such cases our architects work closely with HLF monitors to ensure the common goal. HLF also has regular meetings with us at a strategic level.

Voluntary Sector

We support and encourage the work of the voluntary sector concerned with historic buildings in Northern Ireland in a number of ways. We contribute financially to the Architectural Heritage Fund and to the Association of Building Preservation Trusts. We have a long standing partnership agreement with the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, and hold regular meetings with representatives of the sector to share developments and gain feedback on how their work to conserve historic buildings can be supported.