Defining and Reporting HB&P’s Casework Impacts
| Sponsor: | Historic Buildings and Places |  |
| Sponsor Liaison: | Ross Anthony, Liz Powers | |
| Student Team: | Michael D’Angelo, Frederick Smith IV, Edward Song, Cameron Vesey | |
| Abstract: | Historic Buildings and Places (HB&P), a National Amenity Society in London, provides expert consultation on heritage conservation across England and Wales. Limited resources make it challenging to assess and communicate their impact. This project developed sustainable methods to evaluate HB&P’s contributions using data-driven tools. Interviews with Planning Officers identified how HB&P’s advice supports local conservation and informed an online questionnaire for ongoing feedback. We also created Excel-based tools to analyse change-of-use casework, tracking planning trends and heritage outcomes. These tools could strengthen HB&P’s ability to assess its support and advocate for policy changes. We recommended the continued use of these tools and the questionnaire to enhance impact reporting. | |
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Executive Summary
Historic buildings have long played a crucial role in the social life of communities, serving as spaces where people gather and interact. Many everyday public spaces, such as marketplaces, pubs, town halls, and places of worship, have historic origins and continue to function as important social infrastructure. Such everyday heritage makes up about 92% of all listed historic sites in the UK. Redevelopment pressures often put this heritage at risk. Laws and policies in England and Wales aim to ensure that heritage conservation goals are considered when changes are proposed to listed buildings. In England and Wales, proposals to alter or demolish listed buildings must be submitted to Local Planning Authorities (LPAs), who make final decisions considering conservation goals with social, environmental, and economic impacts. In the decision-making process, they consult with heritage statutory groups specialising in heritage conservation. These include National Amenity Societies (NAS), such as Historic Buildings and Places (HB&P), which provide expert advice on proposed changes, issuing letters of support, objection, or advice on heritage-sensitive development. However, for heritage statutory groups like HB&P to effectively advocate for sustainable adaption, they need to clearly demonstrate their impact to meet the expectations of funders who seek measurable outcomes. Currently, HB&P struggles to systematically analyse and communicate their contributions to application outcomes. A previous study (Blake et al., 2024) identified keyways to define impact, including geographic distribution of casework, effects on case outcomes, and assistance to communities. Building on this foundation, this project explores methods to evaluate HB&P’s contributions and develop tools to support data collection for ongoing impact assessment.
The goal of this project was to develop sustainable methods for collecting the information necessary to produce impact assessments that highlight HB&P’s contributions at the community level. To complete this goal, we pursued the three following objectives:
- Develop a system for analysing trends within the change of use casework that illustrates the types of changes that HB&P is supporting.
- Conduct a qualitative analysis of the impact of HB&P’s casework on community stakeholders and application outcomes.
- Recommend feasible methods for HB&P staff to collect and manage both types of impact data moving forward.
Analysis of Change of Use Casework
Case officers at HB&P often have an anecdotal sense of trends in Change of Use (CoU) casework, but do not have quantitative data to confirm those trends. Evidence of particular patterns in adaptive reuse of listed buildings in England and Wales could assist in their efforts to further convey their contributions within the heritage sector and to influence government policy. We created an Excel spreadsheet of CoU casework, added data fields for current and proposed uses of buildings, and explored questions of interest to HB&P caseworkers, such as the following:
- What are the regional distributions of HB&P’s CoU casework between England and Wales?
- What new uses are being proposed for listed buildings across England and Wales?
- Which types of buildings are most often undergoing Change of Use in different regions of England and Wales?
Following are example findings relating to these questions of interest using the Excel system to analyse Change of Use casework from 2022-2025:
HB&P’s casework during this period was well distributed across England and Wales, with notable support in Wales and the Northwest of England as conveyed within Figure 1. Of the 362 Change of Use cases consulted on, England accounted for 83% of consultations and Wales 17%, while the Northwest of England made up 19%, slightly surpassing Wales. As HB&P seeks to diversify its coverage, these distributions highlight opportunities to extend support to underrepresented regions while ensuring a balanced national impact.
Figure 1. Heatmap of HB&P’s Change of Use consultations from 2022-2025
Change of Use casework in both England and Wales showed an emphasis on adapting historic structures for residential purposes, illustrated within Figure 2. With 70% of cases from 2022 to 2025 proposing residential conversions—65% in Wales— this suggests that adaptive reuse has grown to be essential in balancing heritage conservation with housing demands. HB&P can leverage these findings to advocate for uniform, systematic policies across both planning contexts that integrate historic buildings into modern development while preserving their significance.
Figure 2. Distributions of proposed uses of buildings within HB&P’s English CoU casework (2022-2025)
A high proportion of HB&P’s Change of Use casework in Wales was proposed conversions of religious buildings, comprising 47% of cases, as shown in Figure 3. This concentration may be linked to differences in Ecclesiastical Exemption regulations, as major denominations in England can bypass listed building consent while Wales imposes stricter requirements, particularly on Nonconformist chapels. This regulatory contrast suggests a potential influence on the volume of formal CoU applications in Wales, presenting an opportunity for HB&P to highlight these trends to policymakers when advocating for clearer and more consistent heritage protections.
Figure 3. Distributions of current uses within HB&P’s Welsh CoU casework (2022-2025)
To help sustain this type of casework analysis in the future, we set up pivot tables and graphs in Excel that will automatically populate when new cases are added. We also created manuals and procedures for HB&P staff that explain how to do the following:
- Maintain the change of use casework database in Excel and continue to populate the new data fields using drop-down menus
- Use data analytics including pivot tables, bar graphs, and pie charts
- Utilise an online tool called Power-User for heat-mapping, and the county converter that we developed to populate heatmaps based on counties within England
Impacts at the Community Level
We conducted interviews with five Local Planning Authority Officers from planning councils in different regions of England and Wales. The format of these interviews was semi-structured virtual meetings that lasted roughly 20-30 minutes. We focused the interviews on the following research questions:
- What are the Local Planning Officers current perceptions of National Amenity Societies in the planning-decision process?
- What is the level of interaction between Local Planning Officers and National Amenity Societies?
- To what extent do National Amenity Societies affect the outcomes of planning decisions across different Plannings/regions?
- Are there any ways in which HB&P and other National Amenity Societies can improve their efforts within the planning-decision process?
We grouped insights from the interviews into four categories: the role and effectiveness of National Amenity Societies (NAS), community engagement in heritage conservation, HB&P’s impact on planning decisions and outcomes, and areas for HB&P’s improvement. We will explain a major theme from each category (see Figure 4).
NAS reinforce LPA decisions and add value in supporting conservation arguments. Input provides external validation for LPA Officers to justify decisions when facing challenges from developers (Figure 4). However, two officers also noted concerns about redundancy when multiple NAS groups submit nearly identical responses, raising questions about resource allocation.
Communities value heritage but remain passive in conservation efforts. While many residents appreciate historical sites, their involvement fluctuates. Some communities actively participate in consultations while others only engage when they are directly affected. Following up on these points, three officers also emphasised the need for stronger public education initiatives to promote long-term conservation engagement throughout different communities.
Consistent and detailed feedback from HB&P strengthens applications, particularly through advisory letters that LPA Officers can use as supporting evidence. Officers noted that HB&P’s responses provide applicants with structured conservation-focused feedback that can help refine proposals and align them with heritage policies. This role enhances the clarity and effectiveness of planning submissions.
Unclear specialisation of expertise limits HB&P’s distinctiveness. Unlike other NAS such as the Victorian Society or the Georgian group, which focus on specific architectural periods, HB&P does not have a clearly defined niche. This gap can make it difficult for officers to determine to what specific cases HB&P’s input is most applicable which also leads to redundant responses alongside other NAS groups. Establishing clearer focus could enhance HB&P’s ability to provide more targeted contributions in planning consultations.
Figure 4. Themes in LPA Officers’ Responses (Shaded icons represent the number of LPA officers who mentioned each statement)
With the feedback from LPA officers, we have generated two different recommendations for HB&P:
- Getting more involved in the Pre-Application process to distinguish themselves as a key consulting body and reinforcing their role in the early planning decisions
- Collaborating more with JCNAS members to coordinate responses to casework to provide a balanced distribution of consultations to planning applications.
Distributing a Questionnaire to LPA Officers to Collect Future Qualitative Data
For our final deliverable, we focused on ensuring that HB&P can continue collecting the similar type of qualitative data from LPA officers as in our interviews, but in a more hands-off manner that minimises strain on staff. We recommend that HB&P distributes a questionnaire to LPA officers who have been provided with consultations on more than three cases in the given year. This questionnaire should be distributed once a year, ideally before the September reporting period, allowing HB&P to gather feedback on the impact of their casework and how to improve their consultation procedures to support community needs.