T6: Heritage & Conservation

In many areas across England, the value of our historic and natural environment has been well recognised as making a vital contribution to making successful places. Existing heritage and conservation assets (including buildings, landscape/man-made archaeological or architecturally important features and monuments) should be seen as an opportunity to deliver sustainable development and achieve high design quality objectives.
 
The incorporation of heritage and conservation features into large development projects needs careful consideration and planning to ensure that their qualities are not to be diminished, proposals are acceptable to relevant bodies and that delay to progress and delivery of the project is avoided.

The importance of heritage and conservation issues on the evolution of development proposals primarily relate to three key issues:

• The need to identify all the elements of the historic environment on the site at the earliest possible stage and to understand the overall historic character of a site/area and its surroundings. 
• The need to protect and enhance certain buildings, monuments, archaeological and/or landscape features of special architectural, historical or cultural significance in situ;
• The need to protect the setting of such buildings, monuments, archaeological and/or landscape features thus influencing the development of adjoining sites across a wider area.

This topic paper considers who should be involved when dealing with issues related to heritage & conservation, the underlying strategic policy basis, how to assemble the evidence base and take this forward into analysis. HELM: Historic Environment Local Management is a website provided through a partnership project led by English Heritage and supported by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs. The aim of the website is to share best practice and to build capacity and confidence in those dealing with and making decisions on the historic environment.