Local Heritage Listing: Identifying and Conserving Local Heritage

Local heritage – whether buildings, monuments, sites, places, areas, historic parks and gardens or other designed landscapes – plays an essential role in building and reinforcing a sense of local character and distinctiveness in the historic environment. It can be formally identified in a number of ways, and one such way is the production of local heritage lists. These enable the significance of any building or site on the list to be better taken into account in planning applications affecting the building or site or its setting.

This publication supports communities and local authorities in introducing a local heritage list in their area or making changes to an existing list. The value of a local heritage list is reinforced when its preparation is informed by selection criteria, thereby encouraging a more consistent approach to the identification and management of local heritage assets across England, to the benefit of all, including community groups, owners and developers, and others who need to understand local development opportunities and constraints. A local heritage list can celebrate the breadth of the historic environment of a local area by encompassing the full range of heritage assets that make up the historic environment and ensuring the proper recording of local heritage assets.

Local heritage lists provide a consistent and accountable way of identifying local heritage assets. Heritage assets identified in local heritage lists will be added to the Historic Environment Record (HER) and arrangements will need to be in place for updating the list, and therefore the HER, when heritage assets which are not on the list are identified, for example through the decision-making process for planning applications. Local heritage lists should be published on local planning authorities’ websites (innovative ways of creating and maintaining lists are encouraged) and local planning authorities should be clear as to how the list will inform their decision-making on heritage assets.