Comment

Representation ID: 2026

Received: 21/07/2021

Respondent: Historic England

Please see attachments for full response.
Evidence Base:
We have set out our concerns in relation to insufficient historic environment evidence to support some site allocations and the need for HIAs.
It is important that your plan is underpinned by appropriate evidence.
Any evidence base should be proportionate. However, with a local plan we would expect to see a comprehensive and robust evidence base. Sources include:
• National Heritage List for England. www.historicengland.org.uk/the-list/
• Heritage Gateway. www.heritagegateway.org.uk
• Historic Environment Record.
• National and local heritage at risk registers. www.historicengland.org.uk/advice/heritage-at-risk
• Non-designated or locally listed heritage assets (buildings, monuments, parks and gardens, areas)
• Conservation area appraisals and management plans
• Historic characterisation assessments e.g. the Extensive Urban Surveys and Historic Landscape Characterisation Programme or more local documents. www.archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/EUS/
• Environmental capacity studies for historic towns and cities or for historic areas e.g. the Craven Conservation Areas Assessment Project. www.cravendc.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=11207&p=0
• Detailed historic characterization work assessing impact of specific proposals.
• Heritage Impact Assessments looking into significance and setting especially for strategic sites or sites with specific heritage impacts
• Visual impact assessments.
• Archaeological assessments.
• Topic papers.
We advise you to carefully consider the list above.
We advocate the preparation of a topic paper in which you can catalogue the evidence you have gathered and to show how that has translated into the policy choices you have made. Do this from the start, as a working document, that you add to throughout the plan preparation process, not just before EiP.
It can also be useful to include in this a brief heritage assessment of each site allocation, identifying any heritage issues, what you have done to address them and how this translates into the wording in your policy for that site allocation policy.