Orion’s founder and managing director Rob Bourn has been featured in PBC Today discussing the rising cost of Historic Environment Record searches and what it means for development projects.

Historic Environment Records (HERs) are databases maintained by local authorities. They hold information on archaeological sites, historic buildings and landscapes, and the results of previous investigations in an area.

They are far more than a list of designated assets.

For heritage consultants, they are the starting point for any assessment and without them the advice given to developers and planning authorities would rest on guesswork.

The cost of searching those records has risen sharply. Over the past year Orion spent around £34,000 on HER searches, roughly the cost of employing a full-time HER officer. As Rob told PBC Today, the increase is not hard to understand. Maintaining a record properly takes specialist staff, data management systems, ongoing research and continual updating, and local authorities are under sustained budget pressure.

The bigger problem for the development sector is inconsistency.

Charges vary widely between authorities. So does the depth and quality of the data, and the standards to which it has been recorded. Turnaround times differ too, which makes programme planning difficult. A site that crosses an administrative boundary needs separate searches from each authority, with separate fees and separate timescales. This makes heritage costs hard to budget for and hard to explain to clients.

The issue has become more pressing since the article for PBC Today was written.

The revised National Planning Policy Framework, published recently, introduces a policy that expects assessments to be made with reference to the relevant Historic Environment Record, and to clearly identify whether a development proposal would enhance significance, have no effect, cause harm, cause substantial harm, or result in total loss. The HER has moved from useful background to a specified part of the assessment.

If the records are expected to carry more weight, they need to be resourced to do so. Rob’s argument is for greater consistency between authorities, sustained investment, and long-term support for HER services so that they can properly support the planning system.

Read the full article on PBC Today.