About the Local Heritage List Platform

The Exegesis Local Heritage List Platform ("LHLP") is an innovative, sustainable cloud-based digital solution that helps local authorities create, manage and publish their Local Lists.

Background

The LHLP was designed in response to MHCLG's 2020 Local Heritage List Campaign. (MHCLG is now called Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities).

In October 2020 MHCLG announced a call for expressions of interest in a new Local Heritage List campaign, providing £700,000 funding for the development of new and updated lists in 10 English county areas. The funding was intended to support projects which involve a county-wide approach to developing local lists. Detailed guidance explained that successful projects should be innovative, digital, publicly available, and involve the local community in compiling the Local Heritage List. Projects should provide a means of maintaining local lists after their initial creation, and the local list information should be added to the local Historic Environment Record (HER).

Following overwhelmingly positive interest from authorities, the MHCLG later announced a doubling of the original funding allocation to £1.5 million, enabling 22 areas to benefit instead of the 10 originally envisaged.

The Exegesis Local Heritage List Platform ("LHLP") delivers these objectives, saving each project from having to design and build their own technical solutions.

The LHLP has been developed by Exegesis SDM Ltd to meet the requirements of projects funded by the Local Heritage List campaign. Now that it is operational, the LHLP is also available to Councils/Projects that did not initially "sign up", including those that are not included in the current funded campaign.

What is the LHLP?

The LHLP provides each County/project with its own dedicated, branded website for the Local Heritage List, e.g. https://local-heritage-list.org.uk/cornwall The County websites are cloud-hosted in our UK data centre, with enterprise-level security and backups, helping projects meet accessibility and GDPR requirements.

The detailed functionality of the LHLP for different types of users is listed below, noting that this is significantly configurable per project.

For members of the local interested community and all public users

  • See clear information about the Local Heritage List, the criteria, and the opportunities to become involved.
  • See the existing Local Heritage List and (if desired) any candidate sites. Find these in an interactive map and/or searchable list view.
  • See an overall index map of County Local Heritage List projects with links to their websites.
  • Sign up to engage, learn, discuss, submit new candidate sites for consideration, and comment on candidate sites. Signing up might be linked to receiving practical training in identifying and recording heritage assets.

For registered public users

Once signed up! In addition to the above, registered users can

  • See the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) sites in the interactive map, to understand what is already protected by those designations.
  • Create new candidate sites, including map location, justification and fit with criteria, supporting images and documents.
  • Comment on other candidate sites.
  • Engage in discussions in a Forum (optional per County).
  • See "my candidate sites" in a simple dashboard, also listing previously submitted sites by status.
  • See feedback from LPA/project staff on submitted candidates.
  • Receive notifications about decisions and feedback (coming soon).

For project staff and/or LPA Conservation Officer(s)

All of the above, plus:

  • Simple start-up "on-boarding" process including training, site configuration, branding, and publishing existing material.
  • Capability to upload existing Local Heritage List entries and/or candidate sites to kick start the process.
  • Publish Local Heritage List criteria, information about engagement opportunities, training, events, news and successes.
  • Manage an (optional) forum for discussion of local priorities, criteria, cases, and for Q & A.
  • Create and update the Local Heritage List during the funded project period and beyond.
  • Controlled user registration with various options, for example requiring completion of induction/training before registration is accepted.
  • Dashboard showing pending candidate sites, allowing review and adjudication, and listing previously submitted sites by status.
  • Receive notifications of new candidate submissions (coming soon).
  • See existing Local Heritage List entries, candidate sites, and National Heritage List for England (NHLE) sites in the interactive map. Find Local Heritage List entries and candidate sites in an alternative searchable list view.
  • Give feedback to applicants on candidate sites, permitting improvements and high quality re-submissions.
  • Record the determination decisions on candidate sites, with justification.
  • See a full audit trail of all changes to candidates and Local Heritage List entries.
  • Add cross-references to HER records.
  • Manage and suspend users accounts if necessary.

For the Planning Department(s)

  • See the Local Heritage List Platform data "live" within Planning and GIS applications (via "API" web services including WMS/WFS).
  • Access list entry details via simple persistent URL, also suitable for printing to PDF for incorporating and referencing in casework and policy decisions.
  • See an audit trail of all changes to Local Heritage List entries, for sound governance.
  • Download Local Heritage List Platform data whenever required.

For the Historic Environment Record

As above, plus:

  • Automatically accession new and changed Local Heritage List entries into the HER. For HBSMR HERs this was released in HBSMR v5.70. For bespoke HERs this will be readily achievable with some programming against the LHLP API.

Find out more

Please refer to the other documentation pages to find out more, or contact us if these pages do not answer your questions.