Evaluation of Incentives for Management of Immovable Cultural Heritage in Lithuania
Summary of the evaluation report
1 July 2015
This report was commissioned by the Office of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania
1
Evaluation of IncentivesforManagement of ImmovableCulturalHeritageinLithuania (summary of theevaluationreport)SUMMARY
Evaluation of incentives for management (documentation, preservation, restoration and use) of immovable cultural heritage[1]in Lithuania was commissioned by the Office of the Government of Lithuania as a part of a framework project on Improvement of Monitoring and Evaluation of Implementation of Strategic Planning Documents[2] and was carried out by ESTEP Vilnius during January - July 2015. The aims of this evaluation were three-fold. First, it comprised assessment of the current situation and needs as regards management of immovable cultural heritage objects. Second, implementation of four (budgetary) programmes administered by the Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture (Department of Cultural Heritage or KPD[3]) was assessed too. Finally, the evaluation report provided recommendations about how to improve incentives for owners[4] and potential investors into objects of immovable cultural heritage so that they engage in restoration, preservation and use of these objects (buildings, as it has been explained above).
As regards current situation and needs assessment, in December 2014 there were about 16 thousand buildingsin the Register of Cultural Heritage Assets (RCHA) both as individual buildings and complexes of buildings. Of them, 6 060 were protected by the state and 1 109 (of those protected) were declared by the Government to be cultural monuments. According to the data of RCHA, at the end of 2014 there were 897 building complexes and 2662 individual buildings. To use another dimension of classification, RCHA had data about 554 manor buildings and 980 pieces of ethnographic architecture. 2863 buildings of the RCHA were wooden. Exact data about the breakdown of listed buildings according to the owners (or administrators) could not be found, but with a high degree of confidence it is possible to conclude that a very clear majority of building owners (circa 70 percent) are private persons.
Lithuania spent on average 25.8 million EUR (annually) on management of immovable cultural heritage during 2010 – 2014. Of this amount, 3 million EUR were spent through the four budgetary programmes of Department for Cultural Heritage, 17.2 million EUR by the Structural Funds of the European Union, 1.1 million EUR by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, 2.4 million EUR – by the financial mechanisms of the European Economic Area (EEA Grants) and 2 million EUR by the municipal budgets. The share of central government expenditure towards protection of the immovable cultural heritage in Lithuania was 0.05 – 0.07 percent of GDP[5]. This and the number of protected buildings are similar or comparable to the neighbouring Latvia and Estonia. What is different, however, is that due to historical reasons, décor and construction design in Lithuania’s protected buildings is very complex and was badly damaged during the period of Soviet occupation (therefore the challenge of restoration and preservation is bigger).
Needs assessment cannot be done in the exact way (as should be) due to the lack of primary data in the Registry of Cultural Heritage Assets. Based on the secondary sources, the evaluation report concludes that the needs by far exceed the available budgetary financing. EU structural fund investments have been able to meet only 25 percent of declared demand (as indicated in the applications responding to the call of proposals). In 2014 the Ministry of Culture collected descriptions of investment projects into cultural heritage and its use. Public institutions and private persons have sent proposals worth 689.6 million EUR, but the ministry will be able to meet only 12 percent(86.9 million EUR) of this demand during 2015-2020.
The four budgetary (assistance) programmes of KPD satisfy 11.5 to 19 percent of demand for budgetary grants for preservation of historical buildings. According to the data of KPD (based on RCHA), 637 historical buildings (individual and complexes) were abandoned or in very poor shape and therefore in need of immediate financial assistance for restoration and preservation.
As regards cultural heritage management policy, the main conclusions are about problems still existing with accounting and lengthy as well as sometimes contradictory planning procedures. They are as follows. The accounting process both for movable and immovable cultural heritage has not been completed and is advancing too slowly. At the end of 2014, the accounting process[6] was completed only for 30 percent of immovable heritage assets included in the RCHA. The remaining 70 percent of buildings were lacking identification of specific immovable cultural property. Therefore RCHA is not fully functional and not fit for policy and analytical purposes, since because of the lack of data it does not lend itself for creation of lists of objects based on various descriptive criteria which are important for management purposes (for example, geographical location, building material, ownership, and other attributes). Furthermore, the Register of Cultural Heritage Assets is not well integrated with other registries, namely, Real Property Register and Residents‘Register. The data exchanges which are important for functioning of all three registries are neither automatic nor regular. Thus protection of cultural heritage (objects) is put in jeopardy, on the other hand, informed policy choices and heritage management decisions cannot be made while decisions made are difficult to assess for their results and impact, especially when it comes to budgetary disbursements.
The owners of immovable heritage objects (buildings) claim that they miss the easily accessible, understandable and up to date information about the requirements for planning, restoration and conservation, maintenance or adaptation of the buildings for use. They would also very much welcome more information about the financing opportunities, services provided by the heritage authorities, best practices (including best technologies) as well as the shift of approach of heritage protection authorities (KPD and municipal heritage protection units) towards advise and consulting. Both owners and potential investors into listed and protected buildings claim that private investments could only be considered for the objects with completed accounting process. Various historical research and heritage assessments reports have not yet been accumulated or made available (including very many financed by the Government) on-line through a single web portal. Importantly, this (and not financial support) is seen by them as the most important issue that the Government should be addressing in the first place.
Restoration, preservation and adaptation of historical buildings is impeded by long and sometimes overlapping procedures applied by the heritage protection authorities on central (KPD) and municipal[7] levels for issuing the necessary permits. Some provisions of Construction Technical Regulations and Heritage Management Regulations contradict each other and need to be streamlined. Evaluation report concludes that the significance level (national/regional vs. local) assigned to the immovable heritage objects is not correlated in any way to the heritage protection requirements applied to (architectural) design concepts (for adaptation), technical plans and other documents, in other words, the length of procedures and requirements are the same for complex and simple objects, for (legally) protected buildings of national importance as well as buildings only of local significance featuring in the RCHA. This disregard of principle of proportionality makes it difficult to employ the internationally dominant strategy of preservation of immovable heritage for future generation, namely, the adaptation of buildings to the public or private social or economic needs, their use through generation of private means of maintenance and investment.
The budgetary support programmes administered by the KPD are relevant for the purpose, namely, for preservation and restoration of immovable cultural heritage. Two of the four programmes focus on conservation and protection due to the mismatch between (high) demand and (low) supply of financial assistance. They are targeting the basic needs, i.e. conservation of buildings and their protection from ruin. On the other hand, the performance criteria for all of the programmes could and should be improved, because currently they measure only inputs and products but not results. It is very difficult to assess effectiveness of these programmes based on the currently used metrics. Two KPD programmes targeting sacred (religious) immovable cultural heritage contain examples of good practice of restoration and adaptation for tourism through thematic approach, which, among other things, encourages inter-institutional co-operation between Lithuanian ministries and agencies.
A survey of Lithuanian municipal administrations[8] revealed that municipal governments own 531 building included in the Register of Cultural Heritage Assets. 360 buildings are in use (of them nine only partly). 172 municipal heritage buildings are not used for anything. 46 of these unused buildings cannot be adapted for serving public needs due to their current condition and/or original architectural design. 113 buildings could be adapted for public use after the necessary adaptation and construction work. Municipal administrations are mostly in favour of adapting these buildings for cultural needs and less so for any other public purpose, such as social, educational or health care services.
Incentives for restoration, maintenance and adaptation of immovable cultural heritage provided by the Lithuanian Government during 2010-2014 were insufficient for the needs of heritage owners and contributed too little to faster processing of accounting and planning documents and mobilisation of private financing. Incentives, including financial, were mostly applied to the buildings owned by the state and municipalities while private persons could not benefit from a significantly large number of these incentives.
As regards recommendations provided in the evaluation report, the priority recommendation is about solving the issues related to the still incomplete process of accounting of heritage assets, especially identification of specific immovable cultural properties. This recommendation is not new and has been already proposed in various reports by the State Audit Office and the Ministry of Culture. However, during the past five-six years this issue has not yet been addressed as it should have been. Solution to the accounting issues and completion of the RCHA with the necessary data should be regarded as priority. In addressing it, it is vital that integration of RCHA with other registers is ensured or at least the regular exchange of data between the registers is secured. Only in this way cultural heritage policy could become evidence based and result oriented.[9]
The key part of this priority goal relates to identification of specific immovable cultural properties. We recommend to design and implement a special project of about 3 million EUR (financed by the state budget and/or EU structural funds) to complete this process in three to five years for all buildings listed in the Register of Cultural Heritage Assets.
We also recommend to prepare the necessary methodological materials for heritage protection specialists (in KPD and municipal administrations) as regards monitoring of condition of historical buildings, their restoration, maintenance and adaptation) with the aim of better advice for and consulting of the owners of heritage. This would contribute to initiation of more structured continuous professional training too.
The evaluation report provides a list of financial and non-financial incentives for owners (managers) of immovable cultural heritage. Regulatory streamlining, especially through functional review and assessment of adequacy of human resources in KPD and municipal governments would be appropriate. The cultural heritage (regulatory) policy should be based on the principle of proportionality, i.e. simplification of procedures and requirements for objects of only local significance. The needs of owners and investors would be served better if KPD created acertain „advisory basket“of consulting services and technical assistance.[10] Greater initiative shown by heritage protection authorities and orientation towards the needs of clients is likely to generate higher interest from owners and investors, and consequently, higher private investment rates. Their information needs would be addressed by information guide encompassing the most relevant and up to date information on financial, procedural, building management and heritage protection issues. The listof historical research (especially that financed by the state) reports performed on individual buildings should be made public and accessible through a web portal or RCHA. As mentioned above, in the view of owners and investors, the non-financial incentives are more important than the financial ones.
In order to help accumulate the necessary financing to be invested into cultural heritage buildings the evaluation report recommends wider application of the following financial incentives – preferential loans, partial financing of (conservation, maintenance and adaptation) works (in two schemes – advance payment and compensation of incurred expenses) from the state budget, full compensation to owners and investors of expenses related to identification of specific immovable cultural properties (if owners/investors decide to pursue it at their own expense) and additional scoring points for cultural heritage objects/projects applying in schemes (for example, improvement of energy efficiency of buildings) of capital investment by the state and EU structural funds. The report also recommends temporary holidays on property and land taxes for owners in proportion to investment made into historical buildings.
As regards co-operation between stakeholders (institutions and owners) of immovable cultural heritage in adapting historical buildings to the needs of local communities, good examples exist in Lithuania but they are determined by administrative capacity and driven by the interest “from below” (i.e. by local communities and authorities) and cannot plug systemic gaps mentioned above. Systemic issues can be solved and co-operation encouraged by the leadership of the central government institutions. In order to pursue complex investments into cultural objects and objects of nature (buildings and areas) of national and regional significance, co-operation at the central government level would be encouraged by creation (and approval by the Government) of a list of complex investment projects which should be financed from multiple institutional sources. However, in the longer run, such issues (complex investments and improvement of the inter-institutional co-operation) would be better solved by faster creation of state protected cultural reserves or historical (national and regional) parks as recommended by the recently approved Action Plan for Preservation of Landscape and Biological Diversity for 2015-2020.
1
[1] The term of objects of immovable cultural heritage is a verbatim translation from the official Lithuanian term which is broadly equivalent to historical monuments. The evaluators were asked to focus on a subset of this cultural heritage, namely, protected (listed) buildings. For reasons of simplicity, the terms of immovable cultural heritage objects and protected (listed) buildings are used interchangeably in the report and its summary.
[2]Known as Strateginioplanavimodokumentųįgyvendinimorezultatųstebėsenosirvertinimoprocesųtobulinimoprojektas (RESST) in Lithuanian.
[3] The acronym KPD stands for Kultūros paveldodepartamentas (or Department of Cultural Heritage) in Lithuanian.
[4]And administrators acting on behalf of owners.
[5] The higher estimate was calculated based on the financing data collected during this evaluation. The lower estimate was calculated based on the data provided by the Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe (
[6] It consists of the drawing up of inventories, identification of specific cultural property and registration.
[7]Heritage protection units of municipal administrations.
[8]50 municipal administrations responded to the questionnaire of the total 60. The assessment in the evaluation report is based on data from 49 of them.
[9] The main goal (and result) being attraction of as much private investment as possible into restoration, maintenance and preservation and adaptation of historical buildings.
[10]For example, by borrowing from the prototype of the business promotion agency Enterprise Lithuania.