Heritage Works

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Our built heritage represents an important echo of our past.

It is a huge resource helping to shape how our towns, cities and rural areas look and feel. Using the historic environment as an asset, and giving it new life, has also been one of the cornerstones of the economic and social revival of our towns and cities. The careful integration of heritage assets into regeneration projects has played an increasingly important and successful role in many major regeneration schemes and provides opportunities for conservation and development to work together to transform the built
environment.

Evidence from across the country, and picked up in our new set of case studies, demonstrates that ‘heritage works’ and is a valuable asset that has an important role to play as a catalyst for some of the most successful regeneration projects in the country. There is a strong economic case for regenerating historic buildings – the benefits relate not only to the individual buildings, but also to the wider area and community.

Critical to the success of regeneration is finding a viable economic use that can support initial refurbishment, provide the owner or developer with a reasonable return on their investment and which generates sufficient income to ensure the long-term maintenance of the building fabric and any associated public open spaces.

Working with heritage assets requires special knowledge and experience as part of the development process, such as understanding special conservation, planning, and funding issues involved in dealing with historic buildings or places. Heritage Works provides a practical step by step guide on how to bring forward a heritage-led regeneration project; it can be used as a reference document to assist developers, owners, community groups, practitioners and others in bringing forward successful schemes.

This third edition of Heritage Works is a streamlined and updated version of the 2013 document. It includes new case studies and directs the reader to sources of further information and guidance. Its aim is to provide all those involved in the development process with the guidance they need to help make successful heritage-based regeneration achievable.