England’s Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) has announced allocation of initial £700,000 funding (now increased to £1.5 million) that will support projects which involve a county-wide approach to developing or improving local heritage lists.
… focus should be on preparing a first local list or on improving, extending or updating existing local lists…
MHCLG writes:
The initial £700,000 funding (now increased to £1.5 million) will support projects which involve a county-wide approach to developing or improving local heritage lists. We have received significant interest including proposals from:
- county unitary authorities
- county partnerships i.e. group of authorities within a county
- existing joint planning partnerships
These have set out clear proposals around the involvement of civic/heritage groups and local historic building societies
Areas were invited to bid for up to £70,000. with the expectation that projects will be completed by the end of 2021.
Scope of projects
We expect the successful projects to have the following characteristics:
- The focus should be on preparing a first local list or on improving, extending or updating existing local lists.
- Improvements to local lists can cover all types of non-designated heritage assets (buildings, monuments, sites, places, areas or landscapes which have been identified as having a degree of significance meriting consideration in planning decisions, because of their heritage interest), but must include buildings.
- Local lists should be based on clear criteria[footnote 1] set locally but in line with guidance in Historic England’s Advice Note 7: Local Heritage Listing, and be illustrated.
- Work on the definition of criteria, and the identification of assets for inclusion on the local list, must involve the local community.
- Local authorities should be clear on how the local list will be used to inform their decision-making and planning.
- Local list information should be recorded and made publicly available in digital form. It must be added to the local Historic Environment Record (HER). Where no HER exists, the local list should – as a minimum – be made publicly available on the local authority’s website.
- Arrangements should be in place for the updating of the list (and the HER) as new non-designated heritage assets which are not on a ‘list’ per se are identified, e.g. through the decision-making process on planning applications.
- Proposals involving innovative solutions for creating and maintaining local lists (for example, using digital technology) are particularly welcomed.
Selection process
As a first step, expressions of interest were invited from local authorities keen to take part in the campaign and work up projects. The expressions of interest set out details of proposed partnership arrangements, the current state of local lists, the ambition for the funding taking into account the project characteristics referred to above, and the likely level of funding being sought.
Those selected will now be invited to work up more detailed proposals and once agreed funds will be paid out to local authorities via section 31 grants.
Following overwhelmingly positive interest from authorities, the department has announced a doubling of the original funding allocation to £1.5 million to support local heritage lists. This will enable 22 areas to benefit instead of the 10 originally envisaged.
The successful areas are:
- Lancashire
- Greater Manchester
- Dorset
- County Durham
- Surrey
- Somerset
- South Yorkshire
- Buckinghamshire
- Lincolnshire
- Cambridgeshire
- Cheshire
- Tyne and Wear
- Cumbria
- Merseyside (Knowsley, Sefton and Wirral)
- West Yorkshire
- The Black Country
- Gloucestershire (Gloucester, Tewkesbury)
- Cotswolds (Cotswold, Forest of Dean, West Oxfordshire)
- Hampshire
- Milton Keynes
- Peterborough
- Cornwall
For more background see the NewsBlog
