The Senior Conservation & Design Officer introduced the report and advised that the development of Local Heritage List was part of Action Plan 1 of the Heritage Strategy adopted in April 2020 and adopting a listing criteria for the Local Heritage List was the first step before nominations are invited for Local Heritage List. She informed Members that 13 responses had been received and these had been incorporated into the report. She added that there was one late representation from the Faversham society and their representation had also been taken on board. She drew Members’ attention to some of the changes that needed to be made to the document and went through the changes one-by-one.

Members raised the following points on some of the changes:

·         Concerned that landscapes with an historic past rather than historic views would be missed off the listing criteria;

·         Concerned that if wording around landscaping was removed then green spaces would also be missed;

·         the listing criteria seemed to be heavily reliant on buildings being in the landscape view;

·         understood that some ‘views’ could be overlooked for a long distance so it was important the view did not become distorted from buildings;

·         important to protect buildings that were over 100 years old as well as those that were younger;

·         could gatehouses be added into the list of examples of buildings with historic architectural style?; and

·         asked if Member could view a list of individual nominations rather than a summary.

In response, the Senior Conservation & Design Officer, explained to Members the difference between landscape and the local views in the Borough. She explained that local views were different to landscape as they did not have any heritage criteria and were largely defined by their scientific geological beauty. The local views normally did not become a part of the heritage list and required a different set of policies. She wanted to clarify that she had the individual responses collated in a spreadsheet and these would be circulated to the individual Members for their ward area. The Head of Planning agreed to discuss in detail with the Cabinet Member for Planning ‘Local Views’ and the way forward. The Head of Planning would give a verbal update at the Cabinet meeting on 22 September 2021.

The Senior Conservation & Design Officer explained to Members that once listing criteria was adopted, the Council would be undertaking pilot studies for selected urban and rural areas within the Borough, to start the listing process. She hoped that the study would be rolled-out Borough-wide to complete a Local Heritage List by September 2023. Currently, approximately 200 assets had been identified from the HER & old ‘Greenbacks’ as potential candidates for the Local Heritage List. It was estimated that the final Borough-wide list might have around 500 entries. Once the pilot scheme had finished, an assessment group would be created to review all the sites and determine which sites would be placed on the Heritage listing criteria.

The recommendation was moved by the Chairman and seconded by Councillor Alastair Gould.

Recommended:

(1)   That the final version of the Local Heritage List listing criteria for adoption and publication be agreed, subject to the changes as shown in Appendix I of the minutes.