image for illustration: Peter Badcock
Historic England (HE) Guidance on ‘Assessing Opportunity and Sensitivity using Historic Landscape Characterisation’ is open for consultation to 1 August, as guidance intended for all those considering, planning or responsible for large-scale change in the British landscape and seascape.
Historic England writes:
… It helps… identify the types of places, rural, urban or marine, where specific types of change might best occur, where historic fabric, patterns and character suggest there are most likely to be opportunities for it. It also enables them to better understand historic landscape’s vulnerability or sensitivity to types of change, and thus the types of place that might be best avoided…
Users are expected to include government, industry, planners, agencies, landowners and land managers, or representatives of communities and those campaigning for urgently needed change, as well as heritage professionals responding to proposals for large-scale change.
The method has been developed by Historic England in consultation with other agencies and bodies with an interest in change in the British landscape, including the Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers (ALGAO), the Environment Agency, Natural England, National Trust, Chartered Institute for Archaeology.
It uses the comprehensive and systematic map-based datasets of Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) as a proxy for our historic landscape. The method would be used early in the development of strategies or the design of large-scale change, to help in filtering out places that are more likely to have high sensitivity to the change under consideration or drawing attention to places that offer opportunities for it. The simple three-stage method is adaptable, and its results are easily understood.
It starts with examination of the needs and effects of the type of change under consideration. Then HLC Types are assessed to establish the affordances they offer for the type of change, their vulnerabilities to it (modelling opportunity and sensitivity, respectively), before considering how the change would be expected to affect the values we typically apply to them (modelling significance).
