The South West has a significant proportion of England’s historic assets, particularly scheduled monuments, highly graded listed buildings and designated wreck sites:
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Table Summary of historic assets in the South West
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Asset type
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No. in SW
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% of national total
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% at risk in SW in 2009
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World Heritage Sites
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4
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22%
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No indicator
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Scheduled Ancient Monuments
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6,964
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35%
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20.7% (national 17.9%)
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Listed Buildings (all grades)
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88,616
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24%
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No overall figure
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Listed Buildings (Grade I and II*)
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7,022
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23%
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2.1% (national 3.1%)
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Registered Parks and Gardens
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293
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18%
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5.5% (national 6%)
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Battlefields
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8
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18%
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12.5% (national 16.3%)
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Protected Wrecks
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23
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50%
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8.7% (national 19.6%)
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Conservation Areas
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1,543
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16%
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17% (national 14.2%)
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The condition of historic assets
Heritage at Risk is an initiative to assess the state of England’s designated heritage assets, establish their condition and identify what places them at risk, as a first step to implementing solutions. English Heritage launched the first Heritage at Risk Register in July 2008. It brings together information on Grade I and II* listed buildings nationally, Grade II listed buildings in London, and structural scheduled monuments known to English Heritage to be at risk through neglect and decay. Also included are details of registered battlefields and protected maritime wreck sites at risk. General trends in the condition of scheduled ancient monuments and registered parks and gardens was also published.
The Register will be expanded to cover places of worship in coming years. However a significant challenge will be to assess the condition of the approximately 81,000 grade II listed buildings in the region.
There were 147 buildings at risk on the register as of July 2009, a decrease from the 162 on the register in July 2008. Fifteen entries were removed during the past year, Fifty per cent of the entries of the 1999 baseline Register have now been removed as their futures have been secured.
The region has a significant proportion of designated wrecks at high or medium risk. Wrecks are vulnerable to human and environmental impacts and their locations pose management challenges.
Planning and Heritage
In 2009 there were 66,500 planning decisions in the South West. In the first quarter of that year, there was a 24% decrease in applications on the previous year – indicative of the economic downturn. Nationally the decrease was 21%.
Specific planning applications affect the historic environment – Listed Building Consent (LBC) and Conservation Area Consent (CAC). They can only be a proxy indicator for change in the historic environment; they do not tell us whether change is positive or negative or has actually taken place, only that consent for change has been granted. LBCs form less than 10% of all planning applications. They dropped by 10% nationally and regionally between 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 almost certainly due to economic recession. CAC typically represent less than 1% of all planning applications. Whilst nationally they have increased by 13% between 2002/2003 and 2008/2009 they have decreased by 12% in the South West, indicating less change taking place in Conservation Areas.
Scheduled Monument Consent applications decreased by 16% between 2002/2003 and 2008/2009 – a steady downward trend from 2004/2005 onwards indicating less development affecting scheduled ancient monuments.
Applications affecting Registered Historic Parks and Gardens are referred to as the Garden History Society. Numbers of such applications increased by 40% in the South West between 2003/04 and 2008/09. This marks a steady upward trend, with the exception of a slight decline in 2005/2006.
