DPEA Strikes Out

Mark Huiton October 2025

To the Reader

As ever, this article concerning the Scottish government’s Planning and Environmental Appeals Division (DPEA) latest judgement on our case, published on our website, is a vehicle to record our interactions, correspondence and frustrations with Scottish institution over the safeguard, mentorship and recognition of an important missing piece of Scottish history. Some of the information is covered, some of it in greater detail, in other articles but is also included in this article for context.

The reader must decide for themselves if the Scottish government through its agencies such as DPEA are protecting the nation’s interest, within the constraints of law and policy, in terms of understanding, celebrating and safeguarding the nation’s heritage.

Introduction

From 2021, we set about obtaining either authoritative disavowal or authentication for our discovery of two extraordinary and priceless Knights Templar bells, remnants from a twelfth century-built Templar preceptory/infirmary, named Sacro Nemore (Holy Wood), situated in Dumfriesshire. As part of that process, we offered out our focused three-year investigation for debate and review.

Our entreaty, to those appropriately placed to assist, included the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Knights Templar archaeology interred beneath Holywood Church and in its belfry, that demanded serious reconsideration in terms of the future of the only Templar preceptory bells in the world, and the treatment of the interred archaeology beneath the church causing catastrophic humidity and service installation problems above; archaeological issues prohibitively preventing any kind of cost-effective house conversion, not that a house conversion was now appropriate to the building’s legend.

The discovery was not a minor historical consideration, but one of the most spectacular medieval finds of the twenty-first century, not only a significant event for Scotland but for the world—particularly to those who are invested, through ancestry or interest, in Scotland, its history, and Christian historical legacy.

In our trawl for support, we included the most referred academics, Historic Environment Scotland (HES), National Museums Scotland (NMS) and various institutes and specialist international museums—all within a total of over two hundred approaches, that included international scholars, Templar historians and institutes. No one came back with any supportable counterargument against the discovery, yet no one came back with support for authentication of our find.

We cite many reasons in publication for this avoidance to support and mentor our discovery into the public record, none of them because our find is not genuine. Advice from those working with academia and heritage institutions, cited our find was an embarrassment to the establishment, an unwelcome exposure of the delinquency that has been allowed to languish within the historical/academic sector, in an environment of academic and institutional snobbery, with its entrenched opinion based on decades of ‘accepted’ misinformation and unsupportable opinion. Many senior scholars declared we had challenged the intellectual authority of academia, hence we would receive no academic support for our conclusions, even though we had copious research involvement from international academics either via direct contribution or their scholarly works.

Another significant obstruction was avoidance and reticence to support the discovery of a subject (Templar history) that had already attracted copious spurious report and speculation, particularly from those the establishment deemed amateurs. The significant difference was our presentation was a peerless investigation and conclusion supported only by fact and evidence and not supposition and opinion—the fodder of a great deal of subjective history narrative.

By the end of 2023, we were citing academic prejudice, ignorance, indifference and deliberate avoidance being the main hurdles to the discovery. However, by the middle of 2025, after discussions with establishment insiders, we concluded there were several other factors at play, none with any moral foundation. Thus, sadly and frustratingly, it was no longer about obtaining support from Scottish institution for the find, but a realisation exercise to demonstrate that we would receive no support from relevant Scottish organisations, tarnishing the discovery, a supposed good news for history and Scotland with scandal.

We included the country’s institutional churches in the list of Scottish organisations, also the King’s royal agents, Scottish notabilities, the national and local press, legal advocacy, Scottish heritage agents, history-specific volunteer societies and the local and wider community. It was a hard fact to swallow, that we could find no public institute, or community-based group willing to help us bring these bells into public enjoyment, even though we had received nothing but applause for our archaeological report from our beta read of impartial professionals in a variety of disciplines and expertise outside the academic/institutional history sector.

Thus, by 2025, we were increasingly left with only two routes to ensuring the safeguard of the church and the bells’ future; judicial review and orchestrated media promotion, neither of which would present Scotland’s heritage management in a positive light nor place us in any firmer footing with the very agencies to which we originally looked to for support.

We were not the appropriate keepers to retain the bells nor refurbish the church from whence they came. Importantly, we had failed to procure support for these bells to enter a Scottish museum or serve another Christian convent in Scotland, suitable to their historic and fiscal value. Any prospect of creating Holywood Church as a purposed private museum for these bells and the interred archaeology was untenable, due to the level of private investment required, lack of deliverable business plan, particularly in an area with a poor record regarding heritage sustainability and tourist attraction.

The Local Council’s Enforcement Notice

As part of our battle against Dumfries and Galloway’s indifference to the discovery, and the council’s continued disinterest in the church, its historic graveyard, and its Templar history, we were challenging the council’s illogicality in forcing us to return the bells to a dilapidated building without a guaranteed future. We temporarily removed the bells without planning permission, while all work had been suspended on the dilapidated and vandalised church, as we sought authoritative authentication for what would be the world’s most valuable bells outside state or museum care, and an appropriate new developer for the church mis-sold to us as a viable house conversion.

We had pragmatic reasons for removing the bells from the church in 2022 without first seeking planning permission—secrecy and security. The safety of the bells and us their keepers, while still on site protecting the building against a history of petty vandalism, was paramount. We had already circulated our archaeological report to a limited pool of readers under a confidentiality agreement and were hesitant about going through a lengthy public consultation period, openly declaring our find, admitting there were two relatively small priceless Templar artefacts hanging in a derelict church. There had been several arson attacks reported in the area shortly before we lowered the bells for closer inspection, with a devastating fire perpetrated on an historic convent a mere three miles away—it was enough to remove the bells and loose medieval stonework into temporary off-site storage. On-site security was a prime issue, that we later tried to resolve with specialist security (Triton UK) in 2024, only to suspend it due to untenable cost.

In 2022, we were not at that time aware the council would show no interest in the discovery whatsoever. From the end of 2023, after we engaged with the council and its representatives with the full detail of the discovery, neither support nor interest was offered around the find, despite the Dumfries and Galloway Museums Director East supporting the need for the bells to be reconsidered based on the evidence we had presented.

The council, not in any position to disavow the discovery, chose ignorance over logicality and prudence. Particularly damning was the local ward members abstention, and from 2021, the council’s archaeology officer’s avoidance of the reported discovery, failing to provide any technical or professional appraisal of our archaeological report as an archaeologist. Again in 2024, the council’s archaeology officer did not disavow the discovery, again choosing to ignore it instead.

The council’s enforcement notice was purposefully ignorant of the discovery, without any testimony or evidence that allowed it to disavow it. Its action was entirely dependent on HES’s amendment to the listed building record of Holywood Church, that had removed its prior errant record of two sixteenth century bells to cite them as two unattributable ‘medieval-period’ bells (1098-1601), taken from the former abbey. This was an HES exercise in both removing its errant listing while not legally conflicting with our report. Regardless, HES did not disavow our discovery, and so the council were acting on a point of law, badly applied without understanding the heritage in question. The council acted on the principle ‘the particular history of the bells did not contribute to the site’s ‘special interest’. As the history of the bells re-interprets the site’s special interest in dramatic fashion, such a statement was hard to swallow. The legitimacy of the historic property listing maintained by HES could be challenged under Section 14 of the Historic Environment Scotland Act 2014 and certainly would not satisfy the established principle of Wednesbury Unreasonableness, a highly influential standard used in Scottish administrative law for judicial review, determining if a decision made by a public body is so unreasonable that no reasonable person could have made it.

Adding to the unreasonableness was the council’s obligation for us to prematurely part-refurbish the church, in order to ‘temporarily’ return the bells to the church belfry and two stone plaques, previously built into a fireplace into a hearse house in 1965, without the relevant security protocol being available to us as the owners. This work was expected by the council, while we procured new owners for the church, based not on the existing errant and misrepresentative listed building record, which even with the bells returned and the required essential work, rendered the church both unsaleable and undevelopable, but for what the evidence of our discovery exposed, in the knowledge any reasonable and prudent owner of two bells valued (with authoritative authentication) in nine figures Sterling, would remove the bells from the building as it did not provide adequate security.

The council were not in a position to discount prudently the discovery, without authoritative disavowal, just as we could not find new keepers for the church without authoritative authentication of the find—an impasse the council ignored.

We had no intention of complying with the council’s enforcement notice, because it made no sense whatsoever, particularly while absolutely no one had provided any supportable argument to disavow one of the most significant medieval discoveries so far made in the twenty-first century—denied not because of a lack of merit in the discovery, far from it, but via the intentioned and demonstrable obstruction of malicious academic and institutional prejudice.

DPEA’s Involvement

Our second appeal to the DPEA in 2025, was less about securing support against a prejudiced decision made by the local planning authority, but another test to see how far the Scottish government would go to consciously deny and put at risk such unique and priceless remnants of Scottish history, with the knowledge there was no supportable disavowal of the discovery—replaced instead with demonstrable institutional avoidance to deal with an uncomfortable truth for the establishment, but which would be tremendous news for Scottish history and the nation.

We had to go through the DPEA appeal process, frustratingly without any expectation the DPEA would cancel out Dumfries and Galloway Council’s enforcement notice. We anticipated DPEA would follow the prime construct of its last involvement, ie., act only on the existing listed building record as material consideration, under pre-defined parameters and ignore everything else.

We needed to explore how far DPEA would go to ensure the enforcement notice had been correctly offered, ie., in its opinion, was the listed building record correct—sound enough to justify the council’s action under planning statute and legal remedy? This point of consideration was not only fundamental to justify the council’s actions, but to the future of the church, its sustainability and safety—the prime functions of planning involvement.

We had to consider if DPEA, representing Scotland’s governmental ministers, had again deliberately chosen to ignore the incredibly extraordinary and far-reaching circumstances surrounding the discovery and its conflict with the existing ‘accepted record’ and its implication on the original and amended listed building record (fundamental to the case), or if they would objectively follow process, assessing the council’s actions purely as objective and professional and our appeal as unfounded and unreasonable.

The DPEA decision perversely did not disappoint. It was illogical as predicted, even by advising planners, who declared the DPEA reporter had acted in proper application of Section 35 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas)(Scotland) Act 1997, grounds (d) and (e), but they in turn delivered an outcome that made no real sense, because it avoided the extraordinary circumstances they do not deny.

As ever, before public agencies release their official response, we as members of the public are never privy to internal discussions and investigations carried out by those public services, or the truth of the rationale of decision making. However, we should expect that the process is fair and objective, with decisions based upon a fair and objective conclusion in the best interests of the public, within the judicial application and understanding of published policy and the law.

The decisions of the DPEA were based on the listed building record as it exists, choosing to discount our protestations that the current listing was manufactured by HES's refusal to confirm the bells' provenance; that HES’s behaviour was irrational, prejudiced, procedurally improper, and its amended listing and lack of support for our discovery totally inadequate for any sound conservation behaviour and decision making.

Our argument was dismissed by DPEA as something to be resolved between us and HES and had nothing to do with DPEA’s own decision making. Thus, DPEA cited there was no health and safety (security) issues, that the bells were no different from any other bells in other churches, and the council was entirely correct to insist we return the bells, on the understanding of this ‘perceived bureaucratic reality’.

However, while conflict existed over the listed building record, and the fact our discovery and the bells’ Templar provenance, now promoted in the public domain had no supportable authoritative argument against it, the entirely ‘bureaucratic decision’ imposed by the council and DPEA had no pragmatic credibility in the eyes of the public, especially that area of the public that may perpetuate mischief. This was the reality we had to live with—far reaching and potentially catastrophic implications for the health and safety of ourselves and the safety and security of the bells, unless of course the public agreed with the DPEA and the council’s decision that their opinion was sound, based on evidence and disavowal of the bells' extraordinary potential value.

Our Assessment

We raised questions with our legal and planning advocacy and sought answers.

Did the DPEA:

• employ objective prudent decision-making, ensuring historic continuity, integrity and sustainability, for the benefit of the public?

• act, constrained by strict criteria applied to their decision-making, which did not allow any scope for challenge?

• make an illogical decision based on either the incompetence of the DPEA reporter, or inherent failures of their decision-making process?

• act with complicity to cover up, or avoid considering a wider issue and problem within governmental administration, or the quality of the historic record and data informing heritage planning decisions?

  
  

In review, a fundamental point was raised that all historic environment planning considerations are dependent on the correctness and origin of the historic property record. It was clear to any reasonable person the historic property record and its amendment did not reflect the undisputed evidence presented, nor was qualified by the competence of either its origin or its amendment. That the bells’ provenance profoundly reconditioned the understanding of the site and the underpinning archaeology. This fact would have been recognised by the DPEA reporter, tasked with objective review, but they chose to ignore it, adhering strictly to the criteria set out in Section 35 of the Planning Act. Thus, DPEA’s actions were biased, shrouded behind due process, but at the same time not challenging the potential catastrophic error in the government’s record, endorsing HES and the council’s negligent behaviour with regard to significant heritage conservation.

A Damning Admission by HES

DPEA were made aware of correspondence between HES and the Directorate of Cultural and External Affairs, in which HES stated, ‘We [HES] may consider updating the listed building record if the bells are not returned to the building. This implies HES considered the legal protection of the historic property and the bells listed within that property was not necessary, ie., the bells could be removed from the listed building record if they were not returned. This contradicts the punitive legal action which the council intends to pursue, to safeguard the bells attachment to the property under the category B listing. The question is, why would HES suggest removing the bells from the listing unless it doubted their presence on the listing was valid, ie., they accepted the bells’ provenance, and it was the case HES did not want to get involved in authenticating the bells or legally defending its amended listed building record.

Consequences

Predictive intelligence combines historical, real-time, and contextual data to forecast what is most likely to happen in the future, helping to generate actionable insights that guide smart decisions. The primary aim is to anticipate critical outcomes before they materialise. Planning agents are not excused this consideration, as their prime mission is sustainability.

In our particular case, did DPEA;

• expect we would return the bells to the church, on their basis of its decision?

• anticipate we would abandon our researched and proven evidence, accept the lack of any supportable counterargument, and risk unique artefacts, to satisfy what would appear to a reasonable person to be a blindly applied bureaucratic decision, hidden within legal and planning framework but devoid of any kind of real-world logic?

• foresee any legal escalation of the dispute with HES’s revised listed building record would vindicate or endorse DPEA’s decision?

• expect its rejection of all the evidence provided as immaterial, be justified in any future governmental, public or judicial review?

• foresee the Scottish public applauding its decision, as entirely beneficial to them?

  
  

What should DPEA have decided?

In our opinion, under our legal advisement, DPEA (like the council) were not in a sound position to make an informed rational decision, even within the strict parameters of Section 35 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997. Prudence dictated the bells (and the site’s) extraordinary provenance should be resolved before any decision was made, particularly resulting in the bells being prematurely returned. Especially when that decision could potentially present irreversible harm on the building, its bells and its keepers. It was correct to keep the bells associated with the property under planning statute until resolution, but certainly not put at risk the fittings while the DPEA (and the council) were not in a position to validate the listed building record (the basis of the legal action) as appropriate for the application of any action under the 1997 Planning Act, or the comprehensive understanding of the extraordinary historic nature of the site and the building’s archaeology.

In legal argument, the question would be raised, would any reasonable person expect the bells to have been included as integral architectural fittings of an eighteenth-century church, within the category B listed building record created in 1971, if they were known to be unique Knights Templar artefacts, in full consideration of their significant fiscal and historical value? Or was it the case, original inclusion onto the listed building record was only the result of ignorance of the site and bells’ history, within an incompetently derived historical narrative, corrupting any appropriate conservation proposals for the church and in particular its bells?

Response to DPEA

We sent a public statement to the DPEA in advance of any questions we may receive from the press regarding DPEA’s decision.

DPEA responded, accepting the provenance of the bells was not their concern, nor did they dispute it, while misreading our statement, claiming we accused the DPEA of religious discrimination, which certainly was not the case. We had simply pointed out the reality of our find and how security was of great concern to us in the current societal, political and religious climate. We suspect however the Scottish government is extremely sensitive around such matters, hence its misplaced defence.

Its offer of challenge to their decision, eg., utilising the Scottish Ombudsman, had little relevance. Regrettably for many public agencies, particularly those with diverse and often inherent problematic public service delivery, the Ombudsman is purely part of the bureaucratic conveyor belt—a wagging finger to be tolerated—seen as an annoyance more than a corrective watchdog. The Ombudsman has no ‘sharp teeth’ nor ‘biting’ punitive remedy to bear on organisations when they get it wrong. Public organisations generally show little humility with regards to their failures, and in the case of many governmental agencies and departments such as the planning function, who field a lot of discontent, recommendations by the Ombudsman have little lasting effect on operational improvement or customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

The public should expect escape clauses in process, especially in review, where a human operator, adhering to concepts of value and mission, challenges the soundness of the criteria informing the fundamental argument underpinning the process, before they allow it to proceed—human intervention—professional consideration based on critical and predictive thinking.

Critical thinking is the process of actively and objectively analysing information, evaluating evidence, identifying dependencies, risks and benefits, and questioning assumptions to make a reasoned judgment or decision. It involves applying logic and reason to understand situations from different perspectives and stakeholders, identify potential flaws in arguments, and draw well-supported conclusion.

In many bureaucratic systems, the human operator is robbed of any critical thought they may apply to outcome, or any application of predictive intelligence, excusing them of the consequences of their decision. Instead, the bureaucrat is focused on their very narrow view of the process. This narrow view process mind-set is inexcusable for reviewing senior bureaucrats, such as DPEA reporters. It is expected both critical and predictive intelligence is employed to qualify any decision made is both beneficial within any published policy, law, process and is wholly defensible.

DPEA admitted in its decision, the quality of the listed building record was not considered although it accepted it was in dispute. Any intelligent person would be able to see the issues with the current property listing, and although not in a position to challenge the listing, the DPEA was in a position to stop the process until the matter was clarified. Instead, it allowed the process to continue without any regard for the outcome.

It has to be said, it would take an incredibly obtuse DPEA reporter to read the archaeological report and all the evidence provided, compare it to the information forming the listed building record and the lack of narrative supporting HES’s revision, and not, on a personal level, recognise there were considerable issues presented. DPEA officially declared it discounted all this information as immaterial to its decision making. Did this mean the DPEA did not read the evidence? Was this prudence or was it, we suspect, more evidence of institutional avoidance, hiding behind bureaucratic directive?

The reality is DPEA, like the local council, HES, NMS, the Scottish Church and multiple Scottish agencies, simply did not want to get involved with any action that may validate our discovery, regardless of the consequences. The prevailing attitude within public authorities seems to be one of contempt for the general public. The public’s views, any expertise and qualification they may possess in the matter at hand is discounted for the perceived professional authority and competence of officers contained within public service.

DPEA’s decision provided one of the final steps in our journey to receive prudent and open institutional support for our discovery. All we can say is that DPEA’s actions were consistent to that of the local council, HES, NMS, the Scottish institutional Church, and many more Scottish organisations. Absolutely nobody offered any supportable counterargument to the research we presented. All that was illustrated was a poor inditement of the quality of Scottish watchfulness on its own history.

In 2021 we presented, within our archaeological research, a catalogue of misplay, dating back to Victorian supposition allowed to corrupt the existing historical record at that time—through one hundred years of further mismanagement and negligence of the historic understanding and record of Holywood. As our campaign proceeds, more institutional misbehaviour is uncovered. It appears previous mismanagement was not a glitch in meritorious behaviour but simply a prologue to ongoing bureaucratic and institutional failure, we assume not specific to the Holywood site. Frustratingly we have become embroiled in ridiculous circumstances that should never have been allowed, particularly when all we ever requested was support to objectively and authoritatively authenticate or disavow a historical discovery—was that such a difficult request? 

The case illustrates the Scottish government’s heritage policies are perhaps empty rhetoric. HES, DPEA and the local authority are seemingly little more than delinquent agents in the promotion and protection of Scottish heritage, and that academia is devoid of integrity and humility.