C O N T E X T 1 3 0 : J U LY 2 0 1 3 39 RICHARD MORRICE Introducing HER21 This is the first of a series of articles in Context introducing a development strategy aimed at enabling historic environment records to become fully integrated within the planning system. Historic environment records are well known in the archaeological world but have tended to be used much less as a support for building and area conservation and protection.Archaeology is, of course, a branch of historic research, intended to fill gaps in the written historical record by investigation and examination of the material, rather than written, remains of past ages. This kind of research is particularly important for periods before written evidence, which may in some circumstances not survive or exist even for the recent past. For those conserving buildings and designed landscapes, the retention of the object may itself be sufficient. Others, such as architectural historians, are concerned to outline and explain why buildings and artefacts look as they do in aesthetic rather than purely material terms. The study of buildings can seem relatively simple because the presence of the object on the site is obvious. Whenworks are proposed to a building whichmight affect its significance, the very existence of the building is not at issue (although much information about its history, and thus its significance, will be hidden). The existence of archaeological potential on a site, however, may not be obvious, and it needs a marker to show its presence so that it can be taken into account during development. Sites and monuments records were established to provide this marker.These have developed into historic environment records (HERs) under the influence of PPS 5, the National Planning Policy Framework and an inclusive definition of the historic environment.HERs are information services, largely computerised and with GIS, giving access to resources which are intended to be as comprehensive as possible in their coverage, and regularly (at best continually) updated as knowledge expands. It is, after all, no use to have a set of markers that does not cover all potential sites. Like building conservation, which sees its end product as useable and in some ways belonging to all,HERs stress their benefit to the public. As signposts to information relating to landscapes, buildings, sites and finds spanning millennia, they are complementary to the collections of museums, archives and local studies libraries. Balancing this is the support that HERs give to the work of local planning authorities, identifying and recording sites and thus helping to protect, conserve and interpret them through the planning system. HER21 forms just one stage of an HER development strategy that began in 2009 and continues until 2015 and beyond. It is a project partnership between the IHBC, English Heritage and the Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers to enable HERs to become fully integrated within the planning system. Various projects have been developed to reinforce their position as signposts to records useful to all working with the historic environment in the planning system. HER 21 focuses on developing exemplars and good practice, delivering guidance and assisting with infrastructural improvements. The case studies in the articles that will follow in later issues of Context will refer to the six projects most likely to interest IHBC members. This introduction refers to some of these and others which shed an interesting light on the provision of information in building conservation. IHBC members are used to dealing with the historic environment through designation, whether of individual sites or areas.Within those designations, however, there will always be unknowns. It is here that HERs prove useful, in flagging up information potentially from all sorts of sources which can help in assessing significance. A number of the projects looked at the current mismatch between HERs and conservation information (a catch-all term for the information requirements of those working with the historic built environment), both in terms of the planning computer software which is in use in different local planning authorities and the kind of data which is currently captured by HERs. The Gloucestershire HER project assessed the information needed for an HER which covers the built historic environment, covering both listed buildings and undesignated historic buildings, by finding what information was held by conservation officers and assessing what could and should be added to the HER. Part of this was to examine inter-operability between the HER and the planning systems used by the district planning authorities. The Devon project went further, with a trial sharing of datasets between the Devon County HER, South Hams District Council, South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Dartmoor National Park Authority to investigate sharing historic environment data between these organisations, and to provide a template for such sharing and accessibility of historic environment data for other local planning authorities. The Lincolnshire project evaluated a particular technical solution tomake the digital HER accessible to conservation officers by allowing the structured sharing of information and by digitising and making available information currently held only as hard copy either in the HER or in local planning authority files. Kent HER began to develop protocols for the recording,maintenance and dissemination of historic environment data between the HER, local planning authorities and local community groups. A couple of projects were particularly dedicated to widening the HER to include material central to the work of local planning authorities. Worcestershire County Council’s project concerned the rapid inclusion of historic buildings data into HERs through the use of
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