Development And The Historic Environment

Historic environment - what is it?

Historic environment results from the interaction between people and places through time, including all surviving physical remains of past human activity.

The historic environment usually has 3 main strands:

• buried archaeological remains
• historic landscape features 
• historic buildings and settlements

It includes a range of designated sites including those below as well as undesignated sites (some of which may be of equal significance to the designated sites).

• scheduled monuments
• listed buildings
• conservation areas
• registered parks and gardens
• registered battlefields and protected wreck sites

Development - National policy for the conservation of the historic environment

All development proposals have the potential to impact on the significance of the historic environment. Those elements of the historic environment that hold significance are called heritage assets. The significance of a heritage asset is defined in terms of its value to this and future generations because of its heritage interest. That interest may be archaeological, architectural, artistic or historic.

PPS5 Planning for the Historic Environment, CLG, March 2010 combines the previous PPG16 Archaeology and Planning and PPG15 Planning and the Historic Environment. It sets out the Government's policies for managing change in the historic environment.

PPS5 Policy HE6 places the onus on the developer to understand the significance of heritage assets which may be affected by the development proposals. It is their responsibility to have consulted the relevant historic environment records or specialist advisors. This information, together with an assessment of the impact of the proposal environment and the justification for development, shall be presented to the local planning authority (LPA).

The LPA will not validate applications where the impact of the proposal on the heritage asset is not clearly understood from the application. Pre-application discussion with the appropriate LPA is encouraged through PPS5 Policy HE8 to understand the significance of the heritage asset and the impact of the development proposals.