London Heritage Engagement Strategy Pilot - Phase III

Further to a commitment in the London Plan (2021), Historic England, the Greater London Authority (GLA) and other stakeholders have been considering how to ensure the next London plan includes a heritage strategy that reflects and protects what Londoners consider to be their heritage.

The London Heritage Engagement Strategy (LHES) project aims to support the management of heritage, notably through the planning system, with a focus on gathering community input so that it can shape local and strategic policy and decision making. It will also identify ideas and projects for proactive heritage management in the future.

The LHES looks to address the heritage-related requirements in the London Plan and has been developed with key stakeholders. It aims to promote community engagement of the highest quality, with a view for this to result in community development, empowerment and ongoing engagement with local policy and decision making.

It is primarily aimed at communities and Local Planning Authorities (LPAs), and a template has been developed for how to process and present information to inform the plan-making process. In this way the LHES seeks to give communities the opportunity to influence the planning system in a structured manner from the earliest stage of the planning process, to identify potential heritage focused projects and to identify local heritage needs and opportunities in a way that can be fed into local plan making at the earliest stage.

There are many examples of good local engagement with communities on heritage activities by local authorities. However, some local heritage evidence, where available at all, does not always represent 'good practice' in terms of engagement. Many local authorities do not have the resources to deliver this work, and where they do, it may not consider the heritage that is important to local communities or which fits neatly into the planning framework; an example of this might be a street market serving a particular community, a festival that has been running for many years, a public mural, or a community building. All might be considered important heritage by a community, but not have any formal designation as such in the planning system.

In addition, community engagement activities with different focuses can be happening across a local authority at any one time but are not always joined up and opportunities to include formal heritage planning outputs through these activities can be missed - mapping or capturing these outputs in a way that is compatible with developing local plans is not something many local authority planning teams will have capacity for.

By listening to local communities about what heritage issues are important to them, the resulting evidence may be used to inform the development of locally specific heritage policies, including those relating to design and place-making, as well as projects that will deliver greater public value ...