Setting of a heritage asset: the staged assessment

A setting of a heritage asset assessment fails at appeal for one reason more than any other: it describes views and calls that an assessment. Setting is defined in national policy as the surroundings in which a heritage asset is experienced, with an extent that is not fixed and may change as the asset and its surroundings evolve. Views are part of how surroundings are experienced. They are not the whole of it, and treating them as the whole of it produces a document that answers a question nobody asked.

The staged approach in Historic England's guidance exists to stop that happening. Five steps, worked through in order, each one written down.

Step one: identify the assets

Start with what is designated: listed buildings at all grades, scheduled monuments, registered parks and gardens, registered battlefields, conservation areas, World Heritage Sites. Then non-designated assets, which include locally listed buildings, buildings identified in a conservation area appraisal and archaeological sites recorded on the historic environment record.

The search radius is a judgement rather than a rule. Work outwards from the site until you reach the point where the proposal could have no bearing on how an asset is experienced, and record how far you went and why you stopped. On a two storey infill scheme that may be 200 metres. On a 90 metre building it may be several kilometres and it will need a zone of theoretical visibility to define it.

Then screen. Not every asset within the radius needs a full assessment, and a table listing each asset, its designation, its distance and a one line reason for scoping it in or out is what a case officer wants. Scoping out has to be reasoned, not assumed.

Step two: assess the contribution setting makes to significance

This is the step that gets skipped, and it is the one that decides appeals.

The question is not what the proposal does. It is what the surroundings currently contribute to why the asset matters. Until that is answered, there is nothing against which to measure an effect.

Work through the ways setting can contribute. The physical surroundings: topography, land use, green space, the historic street pattern, the relationship between an asset and other buildings of its date. The experience of the asset: how it is approached, whether it is seen from a distance or discovered, what is heard and how busy the place is. Associative relationships: a church and its churchyard, a mill and its leat, a country house and its park, a pair of lodges and the drive between them.

Then say which elements of the setting contribute positively, which are neutral and which detract. A 1970s office block between a church and its former graveyard is part of the setting and it detracts. Recording that changes the assessment of a proposal to replace it.

Write this section about the asset, not about the site. If it reads as a description of the application site with the asset mentioned at the end, it is the wrong way round.

Step three: assess the effect

Only now does the proposal enter. Assess the effect of what is proposed on the significance of each asset, through changes to its setting, and say whether the effect is beneficial, neutral or harmful.

Be specific about mechanism. The building would be visible above the roofline in the view along the approach. The scheme would introduce vehicle movements into a currently quiet churchyard. The development would sever the visual relationship between the farmhouse and the barns it was built to serve. Each of those is a different kind of harm with different mitigation.

Then characterise the harm in the terms national policy uses. Substantial harm or less than substantial harm to a designated asset, with the degree within the less than substantial range identified, because the weight given to it depends on where it falls. For non-designated assets a balanced judgement is required having regard to the scale of harm and the significance of the asset.

Do not assert no harm because the effect is small. An assessment that concludes there is no harm at all invites an inspector to conclude there is some, at which point the whole document loses credibility. Identify low harm honestly and then address the balance.

Step four: avoid, reduce and improve

The guidance asks what can be done to maximise enhancement and to avoid or minimise harm, and it asks this before the balancing exercise.

The moves that work are unremarkable. Reducing height on the part of the scheme closest to the asset. Moving massing away from a key view. Changing materials to something recessive against a particular backdrop. Retaining or reinstating a boundary that historically defined the asset's curtilage. Removing an existing intrusive element as part of the scheme. Improving public access and interpretation.

Improvement matters as well as mitigation. Where a scheme takes away something that detracts, say so and quantify it, because it is a heritage benefit that goes into the balance on the other side.

Step five: document the decision

Record the assessment so that someone else can follow the reasoning from the evidence to the conclusion. That means the assets table, the significance analysis, the viewpoints with a plan showing where each was taken from, the photography with its date and technical details, and a conclusion that engages with the statutory duty and the policy tests.

Agree the viewpoints with the conservation officer before commissioning the photography. Viewpoints chosen by an applicant and defended afterwards are the single easiest thing for an objector to attack. Photograph in winter as well as summer where vegetation screens the asset, because leaf cover is not mitigation.

Put the whole of this in the Heritage Statement. For a taller or larger scheme in a townscape context, a Townscape and Visual Impact Assessment sits alongside it and shares the viewpoint set, and where buried archaeology could be affected an Archaeological Desk-Based Assessment covers ground the setting assessment does not.

Non-designated assets and the balanced judgement

Locally listed buildings, unlisted buildings identified as making a positive contribution in a conservation area appraisal, and recorded archaeological sites all have settings too, and they are handled differently from designated assets.

There is no statutory duty attaching to them. The policy test is a balanced judgement having regard to the scale of any harm or loss and the significance of the asset. That gives more room for the planning balance, and it also gives less room for an assessment that ignores them altogether.

Councils increasingly ask for non-designated assets to be addressed explicitly, particularly where a conservation area appraisal has identified positive contributors street by street. Check whether one exists, because it is the document that tells you what the council thinks matters, and quoting it is more effective than reaching your own view unaided.

Why they fail at appeal

Five recurring failures. Treating setting as visibility. Skipping the significance step and going straight from description to conclusion. Choosing viewpoints that flatter the scheme. Concluding no harm where an inspector finds some, which discredits everything else in the document. And ignoring cumulative effect where other consented schemes will also change the setting.

Underlying all of them is the statutory duty. Section 66 of the 1990 Act requires special regard to the desirability of preserving the setting of a listed building, and the Court of Appeal has confirmed that decision makers must give considerable importance and weight to any harm they find. An assessment written as if harm were simply one factor among many misstates the exercise.

If you want to see which heritage documents a scheme is likely to need, the heritage report types are grouped by category, or check the heritage constraints on a site by postcode.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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