AS the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape celebrated its tenth anniversary of gaining World Heritage Site status yesterday (Wednesday), the chief planning officer at the time, who played a major part in securing the title, has told the Times of how it nearly fell apart at the last hurdle.

It ‘started in chaos and ended in chaos’ was how West Devon Borough Council’s chief planning officer in 2000 Stephen Gill described the six year journey to get the World Heritage Site (WHS) badge.

Stephen said he was sat in his office one day and he had a phone call inviting him to a meeting at the Cornwall Council offices in Truro to look at putting together a bid to UNESCO to get the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape WHS status.

‘The first thing I thought was “was it April 1?” When you think of World Heritage Sites you think of the Taj Mahal or Stonehenge,’ he said.

He attended the meeting, where 73 different organisations were present, and said it was ‘dull as dishwater’.

‘They talked about this new engine that had been built with a new widget three quarters of an inch bigger than the former widget. People started off being quite polite about it but then one group said the nomination document should be written in Cornish and another group agreed it should be written in Cornish but a different style of Cornish and then a full argument broke out.’

Stephen said he intervened and suggested that there should be a human element to it and that it should tell a story rather than it being a technical journal. It was after that Cornwall Council brought in new people to work on it and he was invited to be on the working party. He said only a handful of people did the work putting the bid together and that the majority was done by himself at home in his personal time.

‘I had fantastic support from the councillors Robin Pike, Mandy Ewings and Roger Mathew who were behind me when everyone else was saying it was a stupid idea and we were wasting our time. There was very little support or enthusiasm for it.’

After undertaking illustrated talks around a number of the parishes about the bid in 2005, a meeting was held in Tavistock Town Hall where more than 150 people attended. Many still didn’t think it was going to be successful but it started building momentum.

‘Because there wasn’t much enthusiasm from anyone else and I was the chief planning officer for West Devon and also the Environmental Director at South West Regional Assembly, I already had a lot on my plate and it was a huge workload putting the bid together, but because I had a personal interest in it — my great grandfather was a Cornish miner — I had a personal investment, so I was doing most of the work on it at home.’

Stephen said all the way through issues had arisen with the bid but one of the key issues that arose was the planning policies for protecting the World Heritage Site if it was granted. He had worked with the organisation ICOMOS throughout the process, which monitors and analyses bids for WHS status and then makes a recommendation to UNESCO which makes the final decision. But ICOMOS had expressed concerns that there needed to be a ‘buffer zone’ in place — an area around the WHS where development would not be allowed.

Stephen said: ‘We argued against that — Tavistock is a working town not a monument. I explained that we had a better policy — that any development anywhere that has a detrimental effect on the WHS would be refused. They said they could understand that and asked us to tighten some of our policies up — every indication we had from them was that they were satisfied with the bid.’

However, just two weeks before the bid was due to be heard at a meeting in Lithuania, Stephen and his team were informed that ICOMOS’s recommendation to UNESCO was to defer the bid until such time that a buffer zone was put in place.

‘It was a bombshell,’ he said. ‘I explained to them that we couldn’t do it. We couldn’t have a buffer zone in Tavistock or the other areas in Cornwall. It was pointed out to me that UNESCO had never gone against an ICOMOS decision, but we said we were going to fight it. It was frightening really with only two weeks to go!’

At that time Stephen, along with three others, decided to go to Lithuania to make presentations to UNESCO. Stephen had every intention of going along because of his extensive planning knowledge and background but was advised by West Devon Borough Council to stay to talk to the press about the outcome once the decision was made.

‘The three of them went to Lithuania and for about three or four days before the decision a lot of lobbying was going on, particularly with the delegates on the committee and particularly with countries that shared similar planning policies to us. I told them to put them on the phone to me so I could explain. There were a couple of times where I was having a drink at the Whitchurch Inn and I would be on the phone to UNESCO delegates convincing them why we were right.’

The hard work paid off however as for the very first time UNESCO went against the recommendation of ICOMOS and granted the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site status.

‘I was very pleased, I was the first person they phoned. Someone reported back saying there would be blood on the carpet at ICOMOS that day.’

However, celebrating for Stephen didn’t last long as the next day was filled with interviews with both national and local press and when he got back to his office a few days later he began to feel unwell.

He was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery for lower intestinal problems. He was told his condition was quite serious and that he would need to be in and out of hospital for further operations in the future and because of that he decided not to go back to work.

Ten years on and Stephen is doing well but he said he wasn’t surprised that there had been a slow start to getting things off the ground since the World Heritage Site designation.

‘It was nothing to do with getting the badge, that was just the start. From there you needed to secure lottery funding and get the Guildhall sorted out. The designation was just the starting gun. I’m not surprised at the slow start though, it was just the way things were. Because it had mainly just been me as a one man band and that man had just stopped, it was hard for people to pick up the pieces. There are ten different areas that make up the bid and they were all progressing but Tavistock wasn’t until more recently.’

Plans are now afoot to create a World Heritage Site gateway centre in Tavistock’s historic Guildhall complex to act as an information point and guide people to the rest of the World Heritage Site.

Events have been planned throughout July in celebration of the ten year anniversary, including the unveiling of a large man engine puppet in Tavistock on July 25 before starting a tour of the World Heritage Site.