The purpose of the Bill is to: create a more open, accountable and transparent heritage protection system and to safeguard the cultural property of the United Kingdom and other nations during armed conflict.
The main elements of the Bill are:
Reform of the heritage protection system in England and Wales, including:
• replacing the separate listing, scheduling and registering arrangements with a single system for national registration of terrestrial heritage assets;
• streamlining the associated consent processes, with a new heritage asset consent replacing listed building consent and scheduled monument consent, and merging conservation area consent with planning permission;
• transferring responsibility for registering land-based heritage assets in England from the Government to English Heritage;
• creating a new statutory framework enabling voluntary management arrangements for owners of complex historic sites.
• placing local authorities under a duty to maintain or have access to an Historic Environment Record;
• broadening the range of marine historic assets that can be protected, bringing greater flexibility to the marine heritage licensing system, and introducing a statutory duty on the Receiver of Wreck to pass on information on marine historic assets to heritage bodies;
• repealing the requirement for the Government to use parts of Osborne House for the benefit of members of the armed forces and civil service, giving English Heritage greater flexibility in managing the House and grounds;
• repealing the requirement for the Government to approve new statues in the Greater London area.
Enacting in UK law the obligations in the Hague Convention by introducing a legal regime to protect cultural property in the event of armed conflict:
• making it an offence to attack cultural property protected by the Convention and its Protocols;
• making it illegal to deal in cultural property illegally exported from an occupied territory and making provision for the forfeiture of illegally exported property and its return at the close of hostilities;
• introducing the distinctive Convention emblem (a blue shield) to identify protected property and making its misuse an offence.
The main benefits of the bill are:
• a more open, accountable and transparent heritage protection system, providing more opportunities for public involvement and community engagement in understanding, preserving and managing our heritage;
• informed stewardship of the historic environment at local level with publicly available records of the historic environment and a single online national Heritage Register;
