Why £23,000 a day to run York Minster is worth every penny – Joseph Silke

Tourism is the lifeblood that keeps our treasured heritage alive, yet the lockdown has forced museums, castles, cathedrals, battlefields and abbeys to close their doors.

Such disruption has starved heritage sites of their incomes, imperilling the very preservation of our history. Even as the lockdown begins to be eased, normal life is unlikely to resume until a vaccine is found.

International travel won’t return to pre-pandemic levels for years to come. Without the income that tourism generates, the preservation of our heritage will be at risk.

The National Trust has announced that coronavirus will lead to a £200m loss this summer alone, meaning almost all of its crucial conservation work must be shelved until 2021. Far from celebrating an increasingly growing membership cohort, it is scrambling to dissuade its vital supporters from cancelling their subscriptions.

Historic England has warned that elements of our heritage could be lost forever, citing the risk of craftspeople using centuries-old skills losing their livelihoods as conservation funding evaporates due to the loss of income.

God’s Own County could be hit especially hard. Heritage in Yorkshire adds £2bn to the UK economy and provides more than 41,000 jobs.

Moreover, for every £1 the heritage sector in the region generates, an additional £1.14 is supported by supply chains working with the sector and the spending of heritage sector employees.

This activity has been essential for supporting Yorkshire’s economy since the decline of the staple manufacturing industries.

Yorkshire is home to some of the country’s most stunning and important heritage sites. York Minster, where I worked until last year, is a pertinent example.

The gothic masterpiece costs around £23,000 per day to run. Many of the dedicated craftspeople use the same techniques that their predecessors from the Middle Ages would recognise, from the stonemasons to the glaziers. Visitors normally come from all corners of the globe to marvel at their work, but not now.

During my time working in the sector, I met so many passionate and talented people whose devotion to preserving our history for future generations was inspiring. Before coronavirus, the industry was already competitive with too few jobs to go around.

This competitiveness tended to favour those who could afford to work for little or nothing, a situation which proved to be a barrier for many. Even fewer jobs would only exacerbate the problem and exclude the less well off.

There are wider economic and social implications beyond the sector itself too. The heritage sector indirectly supports thousands of jobs in the hotels, shops, restaurants, pubs, and other hospitality and catering businesses that visitors flock to on their trips.

These jobs are also typically lower paid and their loss would hit the poorest most. The cumulative effect of a crippled heritage sector would be catastrophic for the region and for the country.

We should all be alarmed by the threat of coronavirus to our heritage sites and the dire implications for the wider economy and society.

Conservatives, of all people, should recognise that our history defines our place in time and without it we are lost. Protecting heritage sites is therefore both an economic necessity and a test of the Government’s conservative credentials.

The National Lottery recently announced a welcome £50m Heritage Emergency Fund, with grants available of up to £250,000, but even more needs to be done. So far, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with responsibility for heritage, has said alarmingly little on the matter.

The Government is right to encourage Britons to holiday at home this summer once it is safe to do so, while the calls for creating an additional bank holiday in October is worth careful consideration.

Now the Government and the public must both play their parts to ensure the survival of our shared heritage. If we fail, there won’t be an opportunity to try again.

Joseph Silke is Research and Communications Assistant at the Bright Blue think-tank.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson