Draft Heritage Protection Bill
The draft Heritage Protection Bill has been published for pre-legislative scrutiny. This is a draft Bill for England and Wales, which sets out the legislative framework for a unified and simpler heritage protection system that will be more open, accountable and transparent. The new system has been designed to provide more opportunities for public involvement and community engagement in understanding, preserving and managing our heritage.
The Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) Select Committee published their report on 30 July 2008, following their pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Heritage Protection Bill. To read the report, please follow the link below
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Background
The Bill will unify the designation and consent regimes for terrestrial heritage assets, and transfer responsibility for designation of these assets in England from the Secretary of State to English Heritage; it will also reform the marine heritage protection regime in England and Wales by broadening the range of marine historic assets that can be protected and bringing greater flexibility to the licensing system. As the accompanying Impact Assessment makes clear, the main benefits of the reforms introduced by the draft Heritage Protection Bill are non-monetisable, and may be best expressed in terms of public value and sustainability. The benefits of the reforms set out in this Bill are that they enable us to preserve the historic environment and manage its transition to the future, in the light of both present values and in the interest of future generations. The draft Bill is based on the proposals set out in the White Paper, Heritage Protection for the 21st Century (March 2007).
The pre-legislative scrutiny period (4th April - 27th July 2008) has now ended. The following draft documents were made available during this process.
Documents
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Draft Secondary Legislation and Draft Guidance
In order to inform the scrutiny and public understanding of the draft Heritage Protection Bill, DCMS intends to publish a selection of draft secondary legislation and guidance. The first tranche of these documents to be published electronically includes a draft statutory instrument, code of practice and guidance on the Ecclesiastical Exemption, and draft guidance on the operation of Historic Environment Records in England. These are draft documents and have been published for information only; they are not currently in force.
Documents
PDF versions
RTF versions
Additional draft Clauses
Conservation Areas
page updated 6th August 2008
These documents are available online in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format.
