Our First Formally Listed Assets have arrived!

Summer is an exciting time for everybody, with the prospect of good weather and holidays on the horizon, but for the Local Heritage List it has been particularly positive as we have been able to add our first new locally listed assets! Well done and a big thank you to everyone who has nominated, contributed and commented, we hope you’re all as pleased as we are!

Our newly listed assets come from Barnsley and Sheffield and will be the first of many from across South Yorkshire as we are getting close to formal adoption in Rotherham and Doncaster too.

This fantastic milestone comes as part of a long process to get the local heritage list formally recognised by the councils of South Yorkshire so that their planning departments can make informed decisions that will help protect these places in the future. In order for this to happen, each council’s cabinet/executive committee has to consider the proposal to adopt the South Yorkshire Local Heritage List and then approve the delegation of formal decision making to the Head of Planning for each local authority. This then triggers an internal process that includes a meeting with the Head of Planning to consider the candidates and the production of a formal record of the decision to locally list assets.

This governance process was modelled on the adoption of a Local List in Barnsley in 2019 as part of the Elsecar Heritage Action Zone. When the South Yorkshire Local Heritage List project began Barnsley MBC decided to merge the Elsecar list and continue to use the South Yorkshire List for all future inclusions. This meant that the process for adding assets in Barnsley was much more straightforward and after informing property owners we have been able to add another 10 new assets to the local list for Barnsley.

After the adoption of the Local Heritage List in Sheffield in March we quickly set about getting the internal decision making process underway and as a result managed to meet with the Head of Planning and submit the formal record at the end of last month. Now this has been done, we have been able to add 46 locally listed assets in Sheffield. We’ve also had some great feedback from our colleagues in the Planning department who are really enthusiastic about the impact of the local list on their work and are looking forward to being able to use it.

Although this is what the project set out to achieve, this is by no means the end and we’ll be submitting more assets to the Heads of Planning for approval later in the year. This means that we still want you to keep sending in your nominations for the places you value, so that they can be considered and, hopefully, approved too.

Another positive outcome from our discussions with Planning Departments is that the protection of these heritage assets has been brought to the fore. In all four local authorities there is now ongoing discussion of how best to protect these places and if other policies or guidance can be put in place to increase the level of protection they enjoy. This would have a massive impact on the significance of the local list and be a big win for the heritage of South Yorkshire.

So, as ever, keep nominating your favourite historic site and keep checking the list to see what’s been newly added!