The Heritage Alliance (THA), England’s link body for heritage organisations, has produced a ‘Brexit briefing’ which has been updated to highlight how in the past 10 years the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, including LEADER, has provided England with c.£280m for agri-environment schemes and rural projects with a heritage component.
THA writes:
‘This has delivered specific heritage benefits including:
- 788 scheduled monuments removed from the Heritage at Risk register;
- 24,000 further heritage assets, covering 355,000 hectares, entered into positive management regimes which protect them;
- 44,000 additional, nationally important but un-scheduled, heritage assets on agricultural holdings given basic protection through scheme cross-compliance measures.’
‘… Funding levels need to be sustained (and preferably enhanced) with the historic environment fully integrated into any successor scheme which pays land managers to deliver public benefits. In past schemes the historic environment has not always been seen as a core delivery priority. This is because nature conservation is the subject of EU regulation, while historic environment responsibilities are delegated by the EU to member states…’.
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