1. The significance of Significance
Historic Landscape Project
The significance of Significance
How an understanding of Significance can help our research become a conservation tool
You’ve heard already today about the threats facing historic parks and gardens, and about the need for landscape fans like us to help with their conservation if we possibly can. We’ve also had a nice walk around a garden and talked about its history – well within our comfort zone.
Good news is that it’s possible to make a massive contribution to conservation, without particularly leaving this comfort zone, we just need to slightly retarget what we are already doing.
What I want to do now is to just introduce the idea that in the conservation world there is something called ‘Significance’, which has a more specific meaning than when we use the word in every day parlance.
As we are about to see, the concept of Significance, and therefore the pursuit and use of Statements of Significance runs throughout conservation work. Today is about harnessing the amazing research work that many of you are doing, or capable of doing, or teetering on the brink of starting, and seeing if we can get you to produce Statements of Significance to accompany this work.
It’s one thing spending months or years researching a site so thoroughly that we generate 100s of pages and can say where every plant and path was, and the precise dates of every owner, but in order to make that research relevant and useful for today’s conservation scene, we need to be able to condense and edit that information into a pithy description of its significance – and this is what Statements of Significance are.
So, this afternoon, Andy is going to take us by the hand and show us an approachable way of learning to write SoS. But first of all, please spare me some time to show you why an understanding of Significance is so useful, and exactly why we are hoping so hard that CGTs can help by writing some.

2. Conservation defined (HE)
The process of managing change to a significant place in its setting in ways that will best sustain its heritage values…
To find out why and understanding of Significance is so important to our work, let’s start by getting back to basics . You can see that Significance stars in EH’s definition of conservation.
These are my italics
Clearly, significance is key here. Other words to note by the way, are ‘managing change’ and ‘heritage values’ – more about these later today.
Historic Landscape Project

3. Historic Landscape Project
Historic England
Conservation Principles
Principle 3 – Understanding the significance of places is vital Principle 4 – Significant places should be managed to sustain their values
May well be aware of the silver booklet
EH Conservation Principles, which are intended to guide EH staff and others in the sector on best practice, and designed to be used by others too
EH is clear that the ‘idea of significance lies at the core of these principles’
They talk about things like the importance of the historic environment being for all of us, and the need for informed and informing decisions, but Principles 3 and 4 are most relevant to us today:
3 – understanding significance of places is vital In understanding what is important about a place, we can make better judgements and decisions on its future
4 – significant places managed to sustain their values Once values and then significance of a place are understood, conservation management can contribute to ensuring that change is managed to look after these aspects for future generations
Historic Landscape Project

4. Historic Landscape Project
National Planning Policy Framework
Local planning authorities should
NPPF 126 – ‘conserve [heritage assets] in a manner appropriate to their significance’
NPPF 127 –’require an applicant to describe the significance of any heritage assets affected, including any contribution made by their setting’
Other key guidance that we use:
Of course National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) - a policy from the Department of Communities and Local Government to guide local authority planning decisions.
Significance crops up the whole way through the heritage section of the NPPF
There are a few key clauses particularly worth being aware of
NPPF 126 – In setting out their strategy in their Local Plan, LPAs must ‘conserve [heritage assets]… in a manner appropriate to their significance’ and ‘take into account: the desirability of sustaining and enhancing the significance of heritage assets’
NPPF 127 – LPAs ’require an applicant to describe the significance of any heritage assets affected, including any contribution made by their setting’
Goes onto say that the level of detail required in describing significance should be proportionate to the asset’s importance and no more than is necessary
keep Statements of Significance concise
Historic Landscape Project

5. Historic Landscape Project
National Planning Policy Framework
Local planning authorities should
NPPF 129 – ‘identify and assess the particular significance of any heritage asset that may be affected by a proposal (including by development affecting setting of a heritage asset)’
NPPF 133 – ‘Where a proposed development will lead to substantial harm to or total loss of significance of a designated heritage asset, local planning authorities should refuse consent’
NPPF 129 – LPAs should ‘identify and assess the particular significance of any heritage asset that may be affected by a proposal (including by development affecting setting of a heritage asset)’
NPPF 133 – ‘Where a proposed development will lead to substantial harm to or total loss of significance of a designated heritage asset, local planning authorities should refuse consent’ – although lots of caveats about loss of significance being outweighed by public benefit.
SO important in conservation terms that harm to significance can in itself lead to refusal of consent.
Emphasis on significance even extends to non-designated asset:
NPPF 135 says – ‘The effect of an application on the significance of a non-designated heritage asset should be taken into account in determining the application.’
Of course, this is so relevant for CGTs.
To a limited extent, the significance of designated assets is dealt with by the texts of the HE Register, but CGTs have specialist knowledge necessary for undesignated sites
Worth being aware of for those of you getting involved in Natural England stewardship funding as well
Points demonstrate why needs to have established a site’s significance in order for it to be conserved and managed into the future.
In all its insistence that LPAs need to understand the significance of a heritage asset, the NPPF has obliged LPAs to develop and mange Historic Environment Records.
HLP has been encouraging CGTs to feed their research into the HERs
Presence of HERs in the NPPF and the insistence that this material is used in the planning system
Historic Landscape Project

6. Using Significance: planning applications
Principle 10 states that planning should “conserve heritage assets in a manner appropriate to their significance so that they can be enjoyed for their contribution to the quality of life of this and future generations.” NPPF para 126 states that ‘heritage assets are an irreplaceable resource …. and conserve them in a manner appropriate to their significance…. The house and pleasure grounds at Flete are set within wider late C18 parkland with an extended wooded carriage drive on the east bank of the River Erme... The site of the proposed wind turbine at Colyton Farm comprises a pastoral field on the slopes of the rolling landscape in a sensitive location… The site of the proposed wind turbine…is very exposed and will be highly visible from both near and distant views, including those from the protected landscapes of the Flete Estate, Dartmoor National Park and the South Devon AONB. The proposed wind turbine would break the skyline and be visibly prominent. The proposed wind turbine would introduce a distinctive, alien, industrial feature that would have an adverse impact on the landscape. …In conclusion, we are concerned about the adverse visual impact of the proposed development which would cause substantial harm to the significance of Flete and its setting. We recommend that your authority should refuse consent for this proposal as it clearly conflicts with National planning policy with regard to the conservation of the historic environment
One really key way that we can all use Significance, is in commenting on planning applications.
Here’s an example. Comments from Devon Gardens Trust in objecting to a 55kW, 35m (113ft) tip Wind Turbine at Colyton, that would impact on the Grade II Registered landscape of Flete.
Lengthy letter, so this is highly edited!
Starts by quoting Principle 10 of the NPPF and its reference to Significance.
Then quotes NPPF and its reference to Significance.
Not always necessary to quote clauses in full – the planner you write to will know the clauses well of course –
Sometimes useful in your letter for emphasis where a clause is large and you want to emphasis a small section.
Then he sets out the Significance of Flete, the heritage asset that the proposal affects, in a concise summary (although in this instance he stops short of using the word Significance, and certainly I hope we can improve on this as a Significance Statement in the course of the day).
Then he talks about how the proposal is alien to Flete’s significance, and the wider historic landscape. Again he stops short of using the word Significance – CAN USE IT
Then he summarises the argument and is careful to use the key word Significance, which really flags up to planners that this is at odds with the very crux of conservation as demanded by the Conservation Principles and NPPF.
So, this is a great letter that pulls in the point ‘Significance’ to assess a planning applications and writing the comment letter – it talks the planning lingo and presses the right buttons to make sure the point is taken.
NOT ALWAYS NEGATIVE IMPACT – the beauty of grasping significance of a site is that we can help identify which are the most harmful bits of an application
Can offer alternatives with less impact
Sometimes development can enhance the significance of a site – then support
For the rest of the day we will be talking about how we assess Significance,
Looking today at beefing up blue and purple para

7. Using Significance: www.parksandgardens.org
But if commenting on planning applications isn’t your bag, then you can also use Significance by including Statements of Significance in your research, and then by putting this research onto PGUK. In this way, it can be readily accessed by interested parties (be they amateur historians, garden visitors, developers, or conservation officers) across the world, whereas if you stop at publishing it in a lovely book, it can only be seen by people who’ve got that lovely book.
How when CGTs harness their research work to give it a practical role in conservation, including Significance can make a massive difference.

8. Historic Landscape Project
Using Significance:
Historic Environment Records
The most joined up way to use your research, with SoS attached, is by putting it in the HER.
What are HERs?: A county-based collection of information, textual and mapped, covering thousands of archaeological sites, fieldwork and other elements of the historic environment of the county.
This picture is a screen grab of part of an entry.
They will attempt to gather all the different designations and features of the heritage asset.
Get material from lots of different sources, including specialist academic groups such as CGTs.
2 main uses – as material for academics, researchers etc, but also to inform planners and planning decisions.
When a planner receives a planning application, you will remember that NPPF requires them to assess it against the heritage asset’s Significance.
They will need to know more about the heritage asset, in a hurry, and will go to the HER as their main port of call.
If we have ensured that the very best information is in the HER, then we will have armed our planners with the tools they need to assess and perhaps reject that application.
Good argument for making sure that your CGT’s research doesn’t only get put into a neat list on your website, or even beautiful coffee table book, but also gets put onto the HER.
Do also put in PGUK, as is yet another way that people can access it, and some HERs even link to PGUK.
Fundamentally:
Planners are busy, stretched, under-resourced and usually historic designed landscapes aren’t their specialist subject
They will not have the time to read a dissertation and make their own judgment on a site’s Significance, so you have only given them a (rather unwieldy) half of the tool.
But if you can head your research with a brief Statement of Significance (we’re talking about sentences rather than pages) – the harassed planner can whizz in, understand it immediately, and use it exactly where it is needed in assessing the planning application.
SO, clearly if we can assess and summarise Significance as part of our research, and make that available through the HERs, our research can have a direct application in the conservation of historic designed landscapes.
Historic Landscape Project

9. Historic Landscape Project
Local listing
Non-designated local sites identified with local community against agreed criteria
Local lists can be attached to the Local Plan
Non-statutory
Good way of achieving greater recognition for local heritage assets, albeit with potentially limited protection
And a quick word about Local Listing.
This is a really valuable way to offer some protection for sites that aren’t on the National Register, so not nationally designated, but perhaps of real local value.
By working with lpas, CGTs can help to create lists of local sites of importance, and this list can even be attached to a Local Plan, offering some degree of protection in the planning system. But no lpa is going to have time to listen if you go and dump 100,000 words of research on their desk and ask for it all to be locally listed … what they are going to listen to is if that research is carefully compiled and each entry includes a SoS so that they can see quickly exactly why each site has value.
Historic Landscape Project

10. CGTs can use Significance to:
help assess the impact of development on a landscape
argue our case when commenting on planning applications
contribute appropriately to Historic Environment Records and PGUK
explain the value of a site concisely for Local Plans
So just to wrap up, here’s how you can use Significance:
1) help assess the impact of development on a landscape. Conservation is now about managing change to a site’s significance rather than necessarily preserving in aspic. A planning application may not be to our taste but by recognising a site’s true significance we may be able to establish that actually a large new extension in the pretty 1970s rose garden of an 18th century house with a Brown landscape ‘round the other side’ may not be as devastating as we thought,
By understanding significance and using this as a way of assessing impact, we can prompt ourselves to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic in our conservation work.
Conversely, we may realise that the litterbin that has just been put in the middle of the Capability Brown view may actually have far more of a detrimental impact on the site’s real value and significance.
2) argue our case when commenting on planning applications. Remember the NPPF and how much weight you’re allowed to give impact on significance in commenting on an application.
In NPPF the developer is required to lay out the impact of the proposals on the significance of the site.
If they cannot identify what is significant about the site this leaves it vulnerable to erosion and loss.
And if we can tap into Significance, our letters will press all the right buttons.
Most of you here are currently more involved in research work than planning application work, but I do hope that this is something you’ll start getting involved in, if only by contributing SoS.
3) contribute appropriately to Historic Environment Records and PGUK
They are used by LA officers to help inform their decisions and function best when they have SoS. If we can put our research into the HER with a SoS, then we are giving it wings as a conservation tool.
4) explain the value of a site concisely for Local Plans . Looked at how local plans can give local sites a degree of protection, and yet again, these function best if the site entries come with a SoS.
Plus, even if you’re not interested in the crucial role of significance in research, planning and conservation, the ability to determine significance will be useful even in your more traditional work of organising garden visits, education, writing up for publication etc.
Essentially, researched information can have a greater impact if the key ‘hooks’ of a site, what makes it special, are drawn out – ie why should people care about this landscape?
Historic Landscape Project