Inside the civil war in English Heritage which has brought its chief down

Telegraph

10 hours ago

With its rich red Georgian façade, the exquisite Ranger's House on the edge of Greenwich Park provides the perfect backdrop to the raunchy Regency hit Bridgerton. Once the home to Princess Augusta, the sister of George III, it has played host to royal balls, drama and Machiavellian intrigue, long before Netflix.
Vice admiral Francis Hosier, its original owner, dropped dead of yellow fever in 1727 on a disastrous expedition to Panama along with thousands of his sailors. But now its current owner, English Heritage, has also lost its high command after chief executive, Nick Merriman, stepped down after little more than a year.
A statement said that this was for 'personal reasons', but that has not stopped the rumour mill speculating that financial pressures had also played their part.
Beset by cost-cutting, redundancies and an air of quiet mutiny among its staff, English Heritage has been warned by experts and insiders that its days could be numbered.
This comes in the wake of English Heritage announcing earlier this year they are planning around 189 redundancies from a workforce of 2,535, which represents a cut of 7 per cent. The charity also announced cuts to winter opening hours at a series of sites, with an additional 22 sites to become 'hidden gems', with limited openings. Included in this category was Ranger's House, which was previously open five days a week, but has been reduced to opening on Thursdays and Saturdays only because of 'low visitor numbers'.
The air of unfolding crisis around the organisation has been reinforced by the fact that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee launched a new inquiry in December. Titled: 'Protecting built heritage: New inquiry to examine how to safeguard historic buildings and attractions', it held hearings, with experts giving evidence, last month.
Within the redundancies, according to sources, have been a number of senior historians who have helped to bolster its reputation, infuriating both loyal staff and union officials. Potential strike action has been mooted as an option. 'There is a lot of bitterness remaining around the restructure,' a senior union source tells The Telegraph. 'As with all restructures, it leaves everyone who keeps their job in a really miserable position where they have lost colleagues and have to do the same amount of work.'
For the nation, and English Heritage's 1.2 million members, this is no minor matter, because it manages over 400 of England's historic and often iconic monuments. These include Stonehenge, sections of Hadrian's Wall, Tintagel Castle and Dover Castle, where Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk, was coordinated. The last of these, along with Eltham Palace, and the Jacobean splendour of Audley End House, have also all featured in the TV series The Crown.
On the face of it, things might look pretty rosy. A total of 6.1 million people visited English Heritage properties in 2023-24, a 12 per cent rise on the previous year, though down on the last pre-Covid year, 2018-19, when visitor numbers hit 6.3 million.
Examining the numbers that really matter, it becomes clear why English Heritage is in such trouble. Although income for 2023-24 was £141 million, up from £130 million the previous year, expenditure was £155 million, leaving a deficit of nearly £14 million. This means that English Heritage's cash reserves are tumbling at an alarming rate, having fallen from £64 million to £50 million in just a year. At this rate, English Heritage could run out of money in as little as three to four years.
On one level, none of this would matter if the taxpayer was still footing the bill, but English Heritage has been effectively left to fend for itself. Set up in 1983, English Heritage was a quango designed to take care of and protect the nation's heritage. But in 2015, under the Cameron government's 'bonfire of the quangos', the organisation was split into two.
Historic England inherited the statutory and protection functions, which included advising the Government and planning authorities, while English Heritage became a charity managing the properties. The Government handed over an £80 million lump sum in order to secure its immediate financial future. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) cut off all annual funding in 2021-22.
' My understanding is that DCMS have sort of washed their hands of English Heritage, and English Heritage are trying to re-engage with them,' the union source tells The Telegraph.
'I worry that we are entering this kind of death spiral where cuts mean people are miserable, that they cannot do the work they are meant to, which means there is less ability to make money, and it just spirals down.'
He says he is inclined to believe that Merriman did leave due to personal circumstances, but goes on: 'For me, the bigger problem for English Heritage is they have no money, and I don't really see that are ever going to be in a position to make money, because their sites are just not profitable in the way National Trust's are.'
Susan Greaney, an archaeology lecturer at the University of Exeter, who worked at English Heritage for 17 years and has been outspoken about the organisation's problems, believes the writing was on the wall from the start.
'This is a long-term problem, in that English Heritage was split on the basis that the historic properties could stand on their own feet, with some investment,' she says.
'At the time this split happened, most of us were very sceptical that this would work. There was a feeling that they were kind of getting rid of civil servants off the payroll at the expense of everything else. Ironically, it worked relatively well during Covid because all the sites were closed, staff [were] furloughed, and immediately afterwards everyone holidayed in the UK.
'But since then there has been poor weather at key holiday periods. This just shows what a knife's edge the financial situation is, because all it takes is one poor season and the organisation has to look at major redundancies.'
Greaney, who still has close friends working for the organisation, continues: 'It suggests that they probably haven't built up the kind of reserves, and with it a sustainable financial situation, to have a buffer for the bad years. For me this suggests that the underlying premise that this was going to be a sustainable organisation, just wasn't ever going to work.
'If you look at the National Museums, particularly in London, and the funding they are able to get and raise, to still be free, and then compare them to English Heritage's sites, where most of them are ruins, most of them very difficult to maintain, and most do not make money.'
The union source adds: 'We see this right across the whole heritage and museum sector, where people are treated like a doormat because they love their job. English Heritage is the custodian of the national collection, but I just don't seen how the financial model is long term sustainable.
'They have made attempts to get philanthropy income, but that tends to be site specific. As you might expect, Kenwood House [in Hampstead, north London] attracts wealthy individuals, but some of the other sites don't.'
Strike action is 'absolutely a possibility', he says. 'I think it depends on where things go.'
In its response, English Heritage points to increased membership, visitor numbers and income since 2015. They say that the £14 million deficit in 2023-24 was a 'planned reduction', underwritten with a government loan of £23.4 million in 2021. A spokesman pointed to the ongoing impact of Covid on international visitors, inflation, the National Insurance contribution impact, and wider problems for the culture sector.
'There is no doubt that these are challenging times for organisations like ours, but following our restructure, the charity is in a much stronger position,' says Matt Thompson, the English Heritage's conservation, curatorial and learning director.
'We care for these great places on behalf of the nation, and in order to do that we rely on our visitors, our members, and our donors – we are extremely grateful for all their support, both now and in the future.'
But for Greaney, the future of the nation's rich heritage is reaching a point of no return, and it represents yet another financial headache for the embattled Labour government.
'For me, the only solution is really for English Heritage to be taken back in by the nation, and renationalised,' she argues. 'It is just not something that can really make a profit, because the cost of maintaining this infrastructure is enormous.
'This is cultural infrastructure and the heritage of this country, and it is what people come for in terms of tourism and leisure time. It is a significant loss to lose such a lot of staff and expertise from the organisation. There is a slight cycle of decline that you get into if you close more sites, you get less people, and less membership, and I am not sure what the long-term future is.
'These are state properties, and they are not things that you can just dismiss or neglect. They are going to have to come up with a solution.'