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Response: a Historic Environment Policy for Northern Ireland

24 October 2026 · Consultation response · Heritage · Land · Public realm

I support a single, ten-year Historic Environment Policy for Northern Ireland, but the draft is strong on value and weak on means. My response asks the Department for Communities to strengthen it in eight ways, starting with the land that most of our heritage stands on.

• Consultation: Consultation on a Historic Environment Policy for Northern Ireland
• Consulting body: Department for Communities
• Closed and submitted: 23 October 2026
• Outcome: awaited. DfC has said it will publish a summary of responses.

Read the full response (PDF, 14 pages)

What DfC asked

DfC consulted on a draft vision and 17 policy aims for Northern Ireland’s first Historic Environment Policy, to run for ten years with a mid-point review. It is a policy, not legislation. The background paper shows buildings on the heritage at risk database more than doubling, from 527 in 2018/19 to 1,148 in 2024/25, and 96% of the sector’s investment in 2023/24 coming from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The eight asks

1. Treat heritage as land to be looked after, not only buildings to be designated. Many historic sites carry contamination from their former use, and Northern Ireland has never commenced its contaminated land regime (Part III of the Waste and Contaminated Land (NI) Order 1997).
2. Name the historic public realm: streets, squares, historic parks, harbours and the foreshore, shared with the Department for Infrastructure and councils.
3. Make access part of heritage. Northern Ireland has the weakest public access rights in these islands, and most of its historic environment is reached on foot across land with no recorded right of way.
4. Plan for the working heritage: linen and flax, shipbuilding, quarrying and mining, forests, peat, food and farming, fishing, sport, outdoor recreation, theatre and the arts. This is where the economic case for the policy lies, and most of it is undesignated.
5. Give the heritage at risk trend a target and tools: repair and enforcement powers, a revolving fund, community ownership and a share of the land value that heritage-led regeneration creates.
6. Count carbon in every decision to repair, re-use or demolish.
7. Publish decisions, data and progress, as DfC’s own Conservation Principles commit it to.
8. Treat the coast, the Crown Estate’s seabed and foreshore, Lough Neagh, the AONBs and the ASSIs as historic environment in their own right.

The full response sets out the argument for each, with three annexes: the working heritage strand by strand, Northern Ireland’s twentieth-century communications and defence sites and protected landscapes, and a view on each of the 17 aims.

Devolution

Heritage, planning and regeneration are transferred matters. Any Westminster provision touching them, including the public realm framework I am developing, would need the Northern Ireland Assembly’s consent. A DfC policy that names the historic public realm would make that, or a Northern Ireland equivalent, easier to build.

I’ll update this page when DfC publishes its summary of responses.