Where are we up to?

The two most important aims of the South Yorkshire Local Heritage List are that nominations can be made by anyone and everyone and that by being on the list, these places can be protected as part of the local authority’s Planning System.

Since our launch in September, the most visible of these aims has definitely been the public nomination of heritage assets, not only have we received lots of brilliant nominations, we’ve also been out talking to people all over the region, trying to make sure everybody knows about the local heritage list. However, like the proverbial swan, there has been plenty of activity below the surface on trying to achieve the second aim, to have the list recognised as part of the Planning system. To do this the Councils of Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield need to formally adopt the Local Heritage List, both as a way of registering important heritage assets and as an approved list of the assets themselves.

In most cases this means that the Council Executive or Cabinet need to make a formal decision on whether they want to adopt the list or not, based on what the list will do and how it will make a difference to their area. As you can imagine, getting something onto a consistently busy Council Cabinet agenda is a fairly challenging task which involves discussions with Councillors, management and strategy officers and scrutiny of the financial and legal implications of the project. It’s safe to say that the Local Heritage List Team have learnt a lot about local government over the past few months!

As the Local Heritage List is not set in stone, we’re hoping new assets will be added regularly and we accept that some may occasionally need to be removed, the Council decision also needs to take into account a way of making the list flexible. In Barnsley, the first area to approve a local list as part of the Elsecar Heritage Action Zone, the responsibility to approve new assets onto the list was delegated to the Head of Planning to ensure the process was straightforward and efficient. This sounded like a sensible approach and so this is the suggestion we have presented to the other three Councils.

Big in Sheffield!

So, armed with flow charts of how the decision making process works, various reports and Councillor comments and quotes, we started down the road to Sheffield City Council’s Co-Operative Executive Meeting. It was encouraging that the Council officers and Councillors we spoke to along the way were supportive of the Local Heritage List and agreed it would be a good thing to have in place for the city. The meeting itself produced some good discussions on how the list would work and how important it is for the heritage of Sheffield, along with other encouraging comments. The best news from the meeting is that the Local Heritage List was approved! We are now official in Sheffield!

To celebrate the decision and spread the word about the local heritage list around Sheffield, there is now a short video all about it on the Sheff News website, click here to view it.

This means that we are now 50% of the way towards full council approval of the local heritage list across South Yorkshire! It looks like we won’t have to wait too long in Doncaster and Rotherham either, as the governance process is well underway in those councils too.

So, keep nominating all those fantastic assets, we’ll keep assessing them and keep an eye out for a status change to ‘Locally Listed’ on them in the not too distant future!