English Heritage, along with local authorities, has a statutory duty to protect the best examples of our nation’s varied historic environment.  Huge value is placed on the historic environment and the way in which it can educate and enrich quality of life.  English Heritage seeks to promote the understanding and enjoyment of our historic environment in order to ensure it continues to be valued and cared for.

English Heritage identify assets of national importance and protect them through listing (buildings), scheduling (monuments) or registration (parks, gardens and battlefields) and work in partnership with local authorities to help manage the historic environment in the best way possible.  Local authorities play an important role in heritage protection and are responsible for the conservation of 95% of the historic environment (working in partnership with English Heritage on the conservation of Scheduled Monuments and Grade 1 and 2* Listed Buildings). All Local Planning Authorities are required to have access to conservation and design skills.

Government made a commitment to review the way in which we protect our historic environment in A Force for our Future (2001).  Consultation took place throughout 2002/3 (Protecting our historic environment: making the system work better) and a decision report was published in 2004 (Review of heritage protection: The way forward).   The core recommendations in the decision report include providing:

• A single, unified Register of Historic Sites and Buildings of England, which will unify all the current designation regimes onto one Register
• A unified heritage consent regime (combing Scheduled Monument Consent, Listed Building Consent and the Class Consents)
• Heritage Protection Partnership Agreements (statutory management agreements)

A number of recommendations are long-term aims that require primary legislation.  However, a number of changes can be made in the short-term without primary legislation and have already begun, for instance, from 1st April 2005, all applications for listing are now made to English Heritage and not DCMS.

English Heritage is working closely with Government, local authorities and others to the test the recommendations made in the decision report and launched a number of ‘pilot projects’ around the country in 2004, the results of which will feed into a White Paper , scheduled to be published in Autumn 2006.  For details of both the short and long term changes see the English Heritage publication Listing is Changing (2005).

Above all the review recognises the strength of the current systems in place, but wishes to improve on these and make our heritage protection system simpler, more open and fit for the 21st Century.

Further information on heritage protection can be found via the links in the right hand column.