In our last post we looked at searching for and finding key resources in our inventory. Today, let’s look at how our inventory can help you make informed decisions about how to preserve and protect our heritage resources. In particular, Arches for HERs can help you navigate the precarious balancing act between preserving resources and allowing new building construction or land development.

With access to a rich database of historical resources, one might wonder: what’s the point of having an extensive inventory if it isn’t actively used to inform decisions? This question is crucial, as the true value of data lies not just in its findability but in its application.

Arches for HERs makes it easy to leverage data when going through complex business processes. For example, Historic England’s (HE) mission is to promote and protect England’s historic environment, ensuring that the rich cultural heritage is preserved for future generations. This means that HE are not only keeping records of where these cultural heritage assets are, but that they are active participants in decisions regarding urban development.

Arches for HER’s workflows combine seamlessly with the data inventory to give Historic England effective tools that ensure the proper permit review and consultations have taken place before a development project can proceed. Like many government planning agencies, HE has a short window in which to review an application for development; a failure to assess an application means development will take place regardless of the potential damages to cultural resources. So it’s vital that HE staff review a proposed development project’s potential impact on heritage resources in a timely manner.

Accelerating Preservation Efforts

Let’s take a look at how Arches-HER workflows accelerate HE staff’s ability to manage permit reviews. First, Application Areas are the actual geospatial locations where development efforts will take place. It is important to track Application Areas because a single area can have multiple consultations associated with it over time.

A Consultation is HE’s terminology for a review of an application permit, advice on the potential work related to an application area, or guidance on the permit submission itself.

A Site Visit is a crucial component of any consultation. It ensures that developers are following the established conditions that HE might set on ensuring that potential risks to heritage resources as part of the development effort are, in fact, put in place.

Communications are conversations that may take place between an HE staff member and the property development team via phone, email, in person meetings, or another avenue in relation to a consultation.

And the Correspondence workflow streamlines HE’s ability to create the official documents that communicate the decisions made throughout a consultation.

Effective Decision-Making Centers on Collaboration

Historic England and Farallon worked together to design the workflows and ensure that planners have access to data they need to make informed decisions on the building applications they receive daily. The goal of the workflows is to make Historic England’s planners better stewards of London’s heritage resources by balancing the need to develop (or redevelop existing structures) and the preservation of English culture.

Managing these development applications within Arches allows planners to not just query a database, but to keep track of the status of a permit as stewardship decisions are made in real time. Over the years, an Application Area may build up a record of previous Consultations, Site Visits, Communications, and Correspondences—as well as related Application Areas—to form a historical record of decision-making, a record essential to consistently and efficiently managing permit requests in future cases.

Arches HER workflows ensure that development applications are consider within an institutional record rather than just at an individual staff member’s understanding—promoting more thoughtful, consistent, and effective conservation efforts by Historic England.

So, why should we have an inventory of cultural heritage resources? So that we can actively use it to shape our shared cultural landscape. The effectiveness of Historic England’s mission hinges on its ability to translate data into actionable insights, promoting sustainable development while safeguarding the cultural narratives that define our communities. Arches’ workflows make it quick and easy to ensure that development applications are properly evaluated within the cultural heritage environment.