A conference in Cardiff at the beginning of April has set the Welsh off along the road towards a liaison group similar to the one established by the Scots in 1997.

The driving force behind the Scottish Stone Liaison Group, which is supposed to metamorphose into the Stone Institute in due course, was Historic Scotland, the Scots\' version of English Heritage.

Cadw, the Welsh version of English Heritage, is not the driving force that Historic Scotland is and were showing little interest in the conference until the First Minister of the National Assembly of Wales, Rhodri Morgan, backed the idea. The Welsh Environment Minister, Sue Essex, attended and spoke at the conference.

Cadw will now collect together 2,000 word summaries of the papers presented at the conference and publish them in a single document.

But Cadw did not organise the event, called Stone in Wales: Materials, Heritage & Conservation, which took place in the National Museum of Wales, 3-5 April. It was instigated by the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW), joined by the Museum of Wales, the British Geological Survey, Cadw, the Dry Stone Walling Association and a representative of independent stone producers in Wales.

An attendance of about 80 people had been expected but by the start 130 had registered, which was encouraging to the organisers.

In a formal debate at the end of the three-day event it was John Davies from CCW who proposed that the organisers of the conference should meet again within three weeks as the core of a forum on stone.

They also agreed to ask representative of planners and architects, some of whom attended the conference, to join them on the committee. They have since spoken to such groups, which have expressed an interest in becoming involved.

Before the next meeting, they agreed to look at the development of the Scottish Stone Liaison Group with the idea of using the group as a model for progress in Wales. "We can gain from their experience - we don\'t want to reinvent the wheel," said John Davies, who chaired the final debate.

The head of CCW, John Smith, had pointed out to the conference that 90% of the Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) in Wales were in what were formerly quarries. Yet, he said to the surprise of many in the audience, he did not oppose the re-opening of those sites for stone extraction.

John Davies said afterwards: "The planners couldn\'t believe their ears, that the conservation people were proposing this."

It emphasised to him the need for a liaison group. At the moment if someone wanted to extract stone it could take years to for the planning application to go round all the interested bodies, even if nobody objected. If they met, they could all just say they had no objections.

"We might be able to save a lot of taxpayers\' money and a lot of hassle just by communicating with each other," he added. "When there\'s a good realtionship you can so much more done."

A report from the conference and any further developments in the next issue of NSS.

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