At last Council has published its Report explaining why it has not yet submitted the Grace to the Regent House. It will be found in the Reporter of the 24th March 2010 at:
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2009-10/weekly/6184/section7.shtml#heading2-14
It is interesting to note that the Council was sharply divided and there was a Note of Dissent making the telling but obvious point that the reasons given in the Report do not justify the Council in withholding the Grace. It is also seems that Members of Council that face contested election before the Regent House were more likely to sign the note of dissent or abstain from supporting the Report!
This Report will, of course, have to be discussed. And we now have the date of the Discussion. It will be on the 27th April 2010 (see http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2009-10/weekly/6184/section1.shtml#heading2-2). It is important that we have a good turn out on that occasion, so please keep your diaries free for that afternoon...and if you can't make it please write a speech and have it read! Let us see how many senior officers and members of Council who signed the Report turn up to face the Regent House.
Once the Report has been discussed the Council will have to promote a Grace seeking approval of it (and the recommendation not to submit the 50 member Grace). That will be the Regent House's first opportunity to vote on this issue.
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Thursday, 18 March 2010
More delay....and a short tour of Statute A
This post is just to update on the further delay...a delay that is wholly uneccessary. It will also explain the statutory technicalities.
Members of the Regent House will recall that just before Christmas some 79 members of the Regent House petition the Council under Statute A. Since then Council has been trying to decide what to do. It is divided but with a majority in favour of pressing on with the lift and delaying as long as possible the neccessity of facing the Regent House on this issue. This strategy has meant that the lift will be complete before the Regent House has a chance to vote. It is still unclear when we will have a chance to vote...but that day must come. It cannot be avoided.
Now for the technicalities.
Statute A,VIII,7 provides:
"Any fifty members of the Regent House may initiate a Grace for submission to the Regent House...." and in accordance with that provision 79 members of the Regent House initiated the following Grace.
Now what happens next? Statute A, VIII, 9 (omitting irrelevant words reads as follows):
Members of the Regent House will recall that just before Christmas some 79 members of the Regent House petition the Council under Statute A. Since then Council has been trying to decide what to do. It is divided but with a majority in favour of pressing on with the lift and delaying as long as possible the neccessity of facing the Regent House on this issue. This strategy has meant that the lift will be complete before the Regent House has a chance to vote. It is still unclear when we will have a chance to vote...but that day must come. It cannot be avoided.
Now for the technicalities.
Statute A,VIII,7 provides:
"Any fifty members of the Regent House may initiate a Grace for submission to the Regent House...." and in accordance with that provision 79 members of the Regent House initiated the following Grace.
That all construction works for a lift into the Regent House Combination Room be removed and the building returned to its former state, and that the Council report, as soon as convenient, to the Regent House with proposals to secure reasonable access to the Combination Room and associated rooms for those unable to use the stairs.
Now what happens next? Statute A, VIII, 9 (omitting irrelevant words reads as follows):
"(a).... the Council shall consider any Grace or amendment initiated under section 7, and either (i) shall authorize the submission of the Grace or amendment to the Regent House or (ii) shall publish a Report giving reasons for its decision to withhold authorization and recommending the Regent House to approve that decision. If such approval is not given, the Council shall, not later than the end of the term next following, submit the Grace or amendment to the Regent House.
(b) If a Grace or amendment initiated under section 7 involves expenditure from University funds additional to that already authorized, the Council shall refer the Grace or amendment to the Finance Committee, and to the General Board or another body as appropriate, for their advice; in submitting such Grace or amendment to the Regent House, the Council shall at the same time publish a statement indicating how it is intended to make financial provision for the proposed expenditure."
As far as we know (and we can't be certain because nothing has been said officially) Council has declined simply to submit the Grace for ballot (with a flysheet explaining what a bad idea demolishing the lift is and how expensive it will be). Instead the Council is going to publish a Report explaining what a bad idea demolishing the lift is and how expensive it will be! Council will have to recommend that the Regent House approve the Report; and, of course, the only way in which the Regent House will be able to do that is by Grace! (Statute A, VIII, 5 provides:"Any proposal to be placed before the Regent House or the Senate for approval shall be in the form of a Grace...").
So by choosing to Report to the Regent House the Council has chosen the slowest route to a Grace. But a Grace there will be: the Regent House will be voting about whether it should be allowed to vote on the original Grace. But this will be after a torrid Discussion...what larks...except that to the aesthetic abomination of the lift has been added this unedifying pitcure of a Council seeking to avoid facing the Governing Body of the University....Fortunately, the Regent House cannot be avoided...much later than it should have the Regent House will be able to speak!
(b) If a Grace or amendment initiated under section 7 involves expenditure from University funds additional to that already authorized, the Council shall refer the Grace or amendment to the Finance Committee, and to the General Board or another body as appropriate, for their advice; in submitting such Grace or amendment to the Regent House, the Council shall at the same time publish a statement indicating how it is intended to make financial provision for the proposed expenditure."
As far as we know (and we can't be certain because nothing has been said officially) Council has declined simply to submit the Grace for ballot (with a flysheet explaining what a bad idea demolishing the lift is and how expensive it will be). Instead the Council is going to publish a Report explaining what a bad idea demolishing the lift is and how expensive it will be! Council will have to recommend that the Regent House approve the Report; and, of course, the only way in which the Regent House will be able to do that is by Grace! (Statute A, VIII, 5 provides:"Any proposal to be placed before the Regent House or the Senate for approval shall be in the form of a Grace...").
So by choosing to Report to the Regent House the Council has chosen the slowest route to a Grace. But a Grace there will be: the Regent House will be voting about whether it should be allowed to vote on the original Grace. But this will be after a torrid Discussion...what larks...except that to the aesthetic abomination of the lift has been added this unedifying pitcure of a Council seeking to avoid facing the Governing Body of the University....Fortunately, the Regent House cannot be avoided...much later than it should have the Regent House will be able to speak!
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Saturday, 6 March 2010
Council vacillates and delays
Council is still divided on what to do about the lift. But there is no way in which it can avoid allowing the Regent House a vote on this issue. It can delay further but Nemesis is afoot and each day that passes bring the vote closer.
What it should do is simple. It should submit the Grace to the Regent House and let the Regent House speak.... after reading the fly-sheets for and against the lift. Instead it seems to be considering a Report to the Regent House to explain why it is not putting the Grace. But it is obviously not a good reason to go down the Report route just because the Council finds the Grace an inconvenience....but what other reason can it have? The Report will have to approved by the Regent House. So the Regent House will get to vote then; but only after what will doubtless be a torrid Discussion and further delay! The Regent House is going to decide whether this lift stays or goes. It is actually the Governing Body of the University....so this is wholly appropriate. Let the Regent House speak! Council meets again on the 15th March 2010. Let us hope that common sense breaks out.
What it should do is simple. It should submit the Grace to the Regent House and let the Regent House speak.... after reading the fly-sheets for and against the lift. Instead it seems to be considering a Report to the Regent House to explain why it is not putting the Grace. But it is obviously not a good reason to go down the Report route just because the Council finds the Grace an inconvenience....but what other reason can it have? The Report will have to approved by the Regent House. So the Regent House will get to vote then; but only after what will doubtless be a torrid Discussion and further delay! The Regent House is going to decide whether this lift stays or goes. It is actually the Governing Body of the University....so this is wholly appropriate. Let the Regent House speak! Council meets again on the 15th March 2010. Let us hope that common sense breaks out.
The Emerging Monster: Photo of the Lift Under Construction
The plans for the lift have still not been published. So the construction proceeds hugger mugger (as far as that is possible while the Combination Room remains open). But we have a photo of the monster emerging....see above. It looks worse than was thought requiring the destruction of even more of the dias. The glass panelled balustrade is really sensitive to the 15th century context.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
This controversy is not about access for the disabled
The forthcoming vote on whether to demolish those parts of the lift thusfar constructed is not about access to the Combination Room by the disabled. Whatever the outcome of the vote access to the Combination Room for those unable to use the stairs will be secured.
It is true, of course, that it is the University's obligations under the Disability Discrmination Act 1995 that led the Old Schools to decide to build the lift. But the Disability Discrmination Act does not require the University to build this lift in this place. The Act only requires (s. 21) the making of adjustments that are reasonable in all the circumstances of the case to secure access for the disabled. This leaves the University with a wide choice of methods whereby it complies with the Act. There are several alternative sites for the lift none of which are as intrusive as the one chosen. The wording of the Grace on which the Regent House will vote is as follows:
That all construction works for a lift into the Regent House Combination Room be removed and the building returned to its former state, and that the Council report, as soon as convenient, to the Regent House with proposals to secure reasonable access to the Combination Room and associated rooms for those unable to use the stairs.
So if the vote is carried the Council will be obliged to report on the alternative ways, equally convenient for those unable to use the stairs, in which access may be secured without despoiling the room. And one will be selected. Everyone is sensitive to the need to make good decisions about disabled access, but that is no reason to support bad ones.
Friday, 12 February 2010
Notes from Cambridge in the Oxford Magazine
Professor Anthony Edwards has written in the Oxford Magazine of the history of the Regent House University Combination Room, its architectural status and the current threat from the lift. It is reproduced here for a wider audience particularly in Cambridge. Readers new to the controversy might find it useful to read the "What the Fuss is All About" post first.
Notes from Cambridge
Oxford Magazine Eighth Week, Michaelmas Term, 2009
Oxford Magazine Eighth Week, Michaelmas Term, 2009
Showing visitors round the Old Courts of Caius requires a certain humility. Across a narrow lane to our north lies Trinity Great Court, into which one could probably fit our entire Old Courts, whilst to our south sit the 1730 Senate-House and Cockerell’s magnificent University Library built in 1837, now the Caius Library. Behind the Library, and actually joined to it, is the University’s ancient Regent House from 1400. After their tour of our Old Courts I take visitors to Trinity, but never through the Great Gate. I guide them through the gate opposite the Caius kitchens and through a little passage in the south-west corner of Great Court. Even after sixty years the explosion of space as one enters the court still takes me by surprise. It is a stunning entrance.
Unlike the Sheldonian, the Senate-House is permanently shut to visitors, so after the Caius Library (no need for humility there) I take mine straight to the Regent House, the first-floor room built as the meeting-house and chapel of the combined Regent and non-Regent masters. The Victorians had planned to pull it down as part of the rebuilding of the Old Schools of which Cockerell’s vast Library was the first phase, and the two buildings are like siamese twins. Entrance to the Regent House is through a modest doorway on a landing of Cockerell’s grand staircase which leads on up to the Caius Upper Library. Once again there is an explosion of space as one enters
the famous room. The doorway is near the end of one of its long sides, ensuring an unforgetable impression as one sees the room for the first time. It is not the medieval entrance, but one created by Cockerell out of a window embrasure. The medieval entrance is still visible diagonally across the room, a small doorway, long bricked up, originally reached by an outside staircase. Ironically though, Caius does have the best view in Cambridge. Dr Caius insisted that his pretty court should be open to the south to let in the air and light, and from a particular point in it known to every photographer one sees his renaissance Gate of Honour, and beyond it, framed by the Senate-House on the left and the Cockerell Building on the right, the great horse-chestnut tree, then King’s Chapel, and then the east front of the Old Schools with the original wall of the Regent House just visible behind it. I do not know why, but the tree is known as the Registrary’s tree; Dorothy Needham (b.1896), wife of Joseph, the Master of Caius, once told me she remembered it being planted. During the last long vacation (except we are not allowed to call it that any more) the University refurbished the Regent House, used since the 1950s as a Combination Room for members of the modern Regent House (= Congregation). Caians going up and down to the Library noticed that to the left of the entrance, part of the dais had been removed, and we supposed that some problem had been found, dry rot or leaking plumbing perhaps. One Monday morning in September I met two friends coming from taking coffee in the renovated room who told me that the work was actually preparatory to the installation of a lift planned to erupt through the floor into a box the size of four telephone kiosks tightpacked in a square in the north-east corner of the room. I could hardly believe them, and was as appalled as they were.
The Regent House is the most beautiful, the oldest, and, in the words of Willis and Clark in their Architectural
History, ‘the most important’ room belonging tothe University. Purpose-built as meeting-house and chapel, it was licensed by Pope Boniface IX, who also licensed the Caius chapel, and I have seen no evidence of it ever having been deconsecrated. It came into use in the year 1400, and was described in 1438 as being of ‘surpassing beauty’. Though it does not quite match your Divinity School in splendour, it is older, and is historically
the most important room in the universities in the English-speaking world. It is the cradle of our democracy, our Westminster Hall, built at exactly the same time that Richard II was rebuilding Westminster Hall with its fabulous hammer-beam roof, and miraculously surviving the construction of the Cockerell Building just as the Hall had survived the Westminster fire of 1834 three years earlier. Its first recorded event was in September 1401 when the Archbishop of Canterbury and his entourage made a visitation to the University during which the Chancellor, Doctors, and Masters assembled and rendered obeisance. The Archbishop then questioned the Chancellor as to whether the Statutes were being observed. (Our Board of Scrutiny should arrange a repeat.)
For its first three centuries all the business of the University was conducted in the Regent House, all the Congregations of the Regents and their discussions, votes, and disputations, as well as their Commencement ceremonies, until these grew too large and had to be moved to Great St Mary’s. But that was hardly a permanent solution for the growing University, and in 1730 the longplanned Commencement House or New Regent House was inaugurated, later to be called the Senate-House. Pressure to build anew had also come from the need for the Library to expand into the Regent House, and for the next two centuries it held part of the growing collection of books, finally ending its library duty in 1934 as the Catalogue Room when the new University Library was opened and the Regent House could once again be seen in all its uncluttered beauty. Once again it became the House of the Regents. Under the 1923 Oxford and Cambridge Act, most of the powers of the Senate were to be transferred to a House of Residents, and happily the framers of the 1926 Statutes adopted the term ‘Regent House’ instead, which is the usage that comes most readily to mind today. It is unthinkable that the symmetrical open space of the Regent House should be despoiled by a lift structure, but the unthinkable was actually happening. Nobody had told the members of the Regent House that their designated
Combination Room was to be altered; no plans had been laid on their table; no notice had appeared in the University Reporter; and no-one had remembered the statute that requires the Regents to approve by Grace any ‘substantial alteration’ to a University building. When challenged, the University maintained that the work was too insubstantial to require a Grace and declined to call a halt to it. Ten members of the Regent House then called for the matter to be put down for a Discussion as ‘a topic of concern to the University’ (in the words of the relevant Ordinance). This was unaccountably delayed until 10 November. The Registrary declined a request to display the plans for the Discussion. The speeches made were published in the Reporter of 18 November (http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/ current/weekly/6167/section8.shtml), and contain more of the story as well as some trenchant opinions and a helpful comparison with the saga of your Divinity School statue by Professor Evans.
It is depressing to trace the bureaucratic trail. It starts, quite properly, with the Joint Committee on Disability,from where it is taken up by the Minor Works Review Group. Once it had been designated a ‘Minor Work’ nobody took much notice of it, and the Resource Management Committee approved the lift without seeing any plans (a committee unknown to Ordinances which seems to have usurped the function of the Buildings Committee of the Council and General Board which is in Ordinances and is supposed to keep an eye on these things), and without any minute to the effect that a room of huge historic significance was at risk, or that a Grace might be required. Whether that Committee works under delegated authority or via the Council I know not, and the Council minutes do not mention it, but it is said that the lift was on a list the Council saw, again without any plans. From there the proposal went directly to the City Planning Authority without approval by the Regent House. The Conservation Officer is reported as having suggested that the project should only be approved if a staircase was constructed at the same time. English Heritage said no to a staircase, but nevertheless the project was approved as a ‘Delegated decision’, so the Planning Committee did not see it either. So ends Act I of The Disgraceful Lift. Once a Minor
Work, always a Minor Work. Act II starts with the hole in the floor followed by the rumoured news that it is for
a lift, and continues with the Registrary’s defence that it is a Minor Work. It culminates in a statement by Professor A.D.Cliff at the Discussion that ‘The decision not to promote a Grace is consistent with all similar decisions taken over the last decade as regards minor works projects’. But that is economical with the truth: there never has been a decision not to promote a Grace. Noone ever looked at Statute F, I, 2. They are only minor works after all. Act III is in progress as I write. Its ending should not be in doubt, but it will be a skilful playwright who extricates the University from its predicament without embarrassment. And if he scripts the unthinkable instead, what a monument to the octocentenary celebrations it will be, a plastered sarcophagus containing the remains of both Regent Houses.
a.w.f. edwards
Unlike the Sheldonian, the Senate-House is permanently shut to visitors, so after the Caius Library (no need for humility there) I take mine straight to the Regent House, the first-floor room built as the meeting-house and chapel of the combined Regent and non-Regent masters. The Victorians had planned to pull it down as part of the rebuilding of the Old Schools of which Cockerell’s vast Library was the first phase, and the two buildings are like siamese twins. Entrance to the Regent House is through a modest doorway on a landing of Cockerell’s grand staircase which leads on up to the Caius Upper Library. Once again there is an explosion of space as one enters
the famous room. The doorway is near the end of one of its long sides, ensuring an unforgetable impression as one sees the room for the first time. It is not the medieval entrance, but one created by Cockerell out of a window embrasure. The medieval entrance is still visible diagonally across the room, a small doorway, long bricked up, originally reached by an outside staircase. Ironically though, Caius does have the best view in Cambridge. Dr Caius insisted that his pretty court should be open to the south to let in the air and light, and from a particular point in it known to every photographer one sees his renaissance Gate of Honour, and beyond it, framed by the Senate-House on the left and the Cockerell Building on the right, the great horse-chestnut tree, then King’s Chapel, and then the east front of the Old Schools with the original wall of the Regent House just visible behind it. I do not know why, but the tree is known as the Registrary’s tree; Dorothy Needham (b.1896), wife of Joseph, the Master of Caius, once told me she remembered it being planted. During the last long vacation (except we are not allowed to call it that any more) the University refurbished the Regent House, used since the 1950s as a Combination Room for members of the modern Regent House (= Congregation). Caians going up and down to the Library noticed that to the left of the entrance, part of the dais had been removed, and we supposed that some problem had been found, dry rot or leaking plumbing perhaps. One Monday morning in September I met two friends coming from taking coffee in the renovated room who told me that the work was actually preparatory to the installation of a lift planned to erupt through the floor into a box the size of four telephone kiosks tightpacked in a square in the north-east corner of the room. I could hardly believe them, and was as appalled as they were.
The Regent House is the most beautiful, the oldest, and, in the words of Willis and Clark in their Architectural
History, ‘the most important’ room belonging tothe University. Purpose-built as meeting-house and chapel, it was licensed by Pope Boniface IX, who also licensed the Caius chapel, and I have seen no evidence of it ever having been deconsecrated. It came into use in the year 1400, and was described in 1438 as being of ‘surpassing beauty’. Though it does not quite match your Divinity School in splendour, it is older, and is historically
the most important room in the universities in the English-speaking world. It is the cradle of our democracy, our Westminster Hall, built at exactly the same time that Richard II was rebuilding Westminster Hall with its fabulous hammer-beam roof, and miraculously surviving the construction of the Cockerell Building just as the Hall had survived the Westminster fire of 1834 three years earlier. Its first recorded event was in September 1401 when the Archbishop of Canterbury and his entourage made a visitation to the University during which the Chancellor, Doctors, and Masters assembled and rendered obeisance. The Archbishop then questioned the Chancellor as to whether the Statutes were being observed. (Our Board of Scrutiny should arrange a repeat.)
For its first three centuries all the business of the University was conducted in the Regent House, all the Congregations of the Regents and their discussions, votes, and disputations, as well as their Commencement ceremonies, until these grew too large and had to be moved to Great St Mary’s. But that was hardly a permanent solution for the growing University, and in 1730 the longplanned Commencement House or New Regent House was inaugurated, later to be called the Senate-House. Pressure to build anew had also come from the need for the Library to expand into the Regent House, and for the next two centuries it held part of the growing collection of books, finally ending its library duty in 1934 as the Catalogue Room when the new University Library was opened and the Regent House could once again be seen in all its uncluttered beauty. Once again it became the House of the Regents. Under the 1923 Oxford and Cambridge Act, most of the powers of the Senate were to be transferred to a House of Residents, and happily the framers of the 1926 Statutes adopted the term ‘Regent House’ instead, which is the usage that comes most readily to mind today. It is unthinkable that the symmetrical open space of the Regent House should be despoiled by a lift structure, but the unthinkable was actually happening. Nobody had told the members of the Regent House that their designated
Combination Room was to be altered; no plans had been laid on their table; no notice had appeared in the University Reporter; and no-one had remembered the statute that requires the Regents to approve by Grace any ‘substantial alteration’ to a University building. When challenged, the University maintained that the work was too insubstantial to require a Grace and declined to call a halt to it. Ten members of the Regent House then called for the matter to be put down for a Discussion as ‘a topic of concern to the University’ (in the words of the relevant Ordinance). This was unaccountably delayed until 10 November. The Registrary declined a request to display the plans for the Discussion. The speeches made were published in the Reporter of 18 November (http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/ current/weekly/6167/section8.shtml), and contain more of the story as well as some trenchant opinions and a helpful comparison with the saga of your Divinity School statue by Professor Evans.
It is depressing to trace the bureaucratic trail. It starts, quite properly, with the Joint Committee on Disability,from where it is taken up by the Minor Works Review Group. Once it had been designated a ‘Minor Work’ nobody took much notice of it, and the Resource Management Committee approved the lift without seeing any plans (a committee unknown to Ordinances which seems to have usurped the function of the Buildings Committee of the Council and General Board which is in Ordinances and is supposed to keep an eye on these things), and without any minute to the effect that a room of huge historic significance was at risk, or that a Grace might be required. Whether that Committee works under delegated authority or via the Council I know not, and the Council minutes do not mention it, but it is said that the lift was on a list the Council saw, again without any plans. From there the proposal went directly to the City Planning Authority without approval by the Regent House. The Conservation Officer is reported as having suggested that the project should only be approved if a staircase was constructed at the same time. English Heritage said no to a staircase, but nevertheless the project was approved as a ‘Delegated decision’, so the Planning Committee did not see it either. So ends Act I of The Disgraceful Lift. Once a Minor
Work, always a Minor Work. Act II starts with the hole in the floor followed by the rumoured news that it is for
a lift, and continues with the Registrary’s defence that it is a Minor Work. It culminates in a statement by Professor A.D.Cliff at the Discussion that ‘The decision not to promote a Grace is consistent with all similar decisions taken over the last decade as regards minor works projects’. But that is economical with the truth: there never has been a decision not to promote a Grace. Noone ever looked at Statute F, I, 2. They are only minor works after all. Act III is in progress as I write. Its ending should not be in doubt, but it will be a skilful playwright who extricates the University from its predicament without embarrassment. And if he scripts the unthinkable instead, what a monument to the octocentenary celebrations it will be, a plastered sarcophagus containing the remains of both Regent Houses.
a.w.f. edwards
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