DCMS launches Heritage Statement 7 Dec 2017
DCMS has published a Heritage Statement, giving the government’s ‘direction and priorities’ for heritage in the next few years, dovetailing with commitments from the 2016 Culture White Paper and Industrial Strategy. The sector covers a very broad range of groups from English Heritage, the National Trust and Church of England to small charities and private landowners, caring for 377,000 listed buildings. The report found that:
- The sector’s Gross Value Added rose 7% to £987m in 2016, employs 278,000 people directly or indirectly in England and gives a 60% return on public investment. It is also a crucial driver to tourism, with half of all holidays in England including a visit to a castle or historic house.
Priorities for the sector include:
- Partnership between local communities and heritage organisations will be at the heart of the strategy. Historic England will launch a new scheme to help communities “identify, mark and celebrate the events people and places that are important to them”.
- Culture Minister John Glen will set up a Heritage Council to allow all government departments to collaborate where their work touches on heritage. Making it easier to repurpose old buildings will be among the issues addressed.
- DCMS will work to make sure the role of heritage in placemaking is understood and embedded in Industrial Strategy sector deals. Heritage will also feed into the government’s forthcoming 25-year plan for the environment.
- Local planning authorities will be encouraged to ‘invest in the custodians of the historic environment’ and work more closely with Historic England.
- A review and update of the ‘Principles of Selection for Listing Buildings’ will be undertaken.
- Work with heritage organisations to reduce the number of buildings on Historic England’s ‘Heritage At Risk’ register. Currently over 5,000 are at risk.
- Archives and data on the historic environment to be made more accessible for public and professional use through digitisation projects with HLF, Historic England and others.
- More work like the HLF's ‘Kick The Dust’ initiative, which gives a voice to younger people in the heritage sector.
- Further work to diversify the heritage workforce.
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- The principles of the Culture and Sport Evidence programme to be applied to heritage projects, thus generating economic data on the sector strong enough to use in government business cases.
- DCMS will work with large bodies including HLF and Historic England to look at ways of generating funds from philanthropy, crowdfunding and repayable finance.