Where in the UK has the most heritage?

I’m a new Fellow; this is my first contribution. At theoutset may I say that this kind of debate is exactly what I hoped to get from joining?This study, and the reaction to it, pulls into sharp relief the potentialdissonance between a town’s or region’s heritage identity and the image thatothers have of it. Gosport, for example, scores highly for heritage in thisstudy, but few would describe the borough or the town as a heritagedestination. Winchester, just up the road, is a very definite heritagedestination, but scores less highly. Yet Winchester wishes it could achievewhat Gosport has achieved in attracting recent developments in technologicaland engineering education and innovation. Does Gosport wish for itself whatWinchester has achieved in being known as a heritage destination? It would becrass to suggest that a community that identifies mainly with its heritage isnot necessarily attractive to external, forward-looking innovation, but I thinkwe should take very deliberately any decision to properly promote our localheritage identity as a wider heritage image; this is a question thatSouthampton City Council has wrestled with for decades. This study is a digestof existing data and is therefore only as useful as the data upon which it isformulated; we are entitled to take a view on whether those data represent ourown reality. My view is that this study is what it is - it has clearly provokedus and is a powerful opening gambit to a debate - but we can be assured that itneed not have any impact on tactical and strategic decisions made at locallevel. Communities, when properly organised and mobilised, are more powerfulthan data. It’s up to us.

I do think it is rather important that this is seen as a pilot, with the intention of getting the data properly verified and in some cases the categories adjusted, and not as a device for grabbing (spurious) headlines. Perhaps the Fellowship could assist with this? The value of the exercise is really that by providing comparative statistics it gives a means for local citizens to call the policy makers in their areas to account. It will be futile if it turns into a tussle between those who wish to 'rubbish' the whole idea of trying to assess the value of local heritage assets as a basis for serious discussion about safeguarding and developing them, and those who will seize on such results to generate "League Tables" to grab tabloid headlines without regard for the harm done. 

May I illustrate? I am a member of the Council of the Derby Civic Society, however Derby is listed as not having any such organisation. (The source for this information appears to be Civic Voice which has actually been sending us things quite recently !) Derby appears to fare not too badly in relation to "Museums, Archives and Artefacts" but close inspect suggests something is seriously amiss with the nature of the data you are using. 

The capital value of the publicly owned assets is stated to be £0, but actually there is a range of important buildings (e.g. Grade I, World Heritage, etc) which are in the ownership of the Local Authority, though they are run by an independent Museums Trust. I'm not sure how many tens millions of pounds worth of heritage assets these buildings constitute, but the combined amount will  be swamped by the value of just one of the Museum's collections - viz. the Joseph Wright collection, which is recognised as being of international significance. The collection as a whole isn't "owned" by the Trust, but it is not something that the Local Authority could try to sell without breach of Trust. While Derby seems to have done quite well in this section because of just shy of £10M HLF funding, the actual value of the heritage assets to which this section relates runs into hundreds of millions. (They need safeguarding and they need recognising as something Derby has to offer to the wider world. I am quite certain this is true of many other places as well.)

It also appears that because there is an independent Museums Trust which earns income (rather that the Local Authority doing so), it appears there is no revenue being generated by these heritage assets.

The sources for data like this need reconsidering, but an exercise like this has to be potential to be a very useful tool for a local Civic Society (assuming one actually exists !) to challenge local policies and guide what happens in its locality,

I was very critical of this exercise last year and remain so.  You can drive a 'coach and horses' (to use a heritage term) through this data.  Thie idea of coming up with league tables on this is flawed and comparing London with say the borough of St Helens is just ludicrous.  Just take one example of the town of Prescot.  In the 16th and 17th century bigger than Liverpool, hosted Shakespeare in the north, one of the oldest schools in the country, the Parish Church history, the home of clock and watchmaking etc.  To drop that town into the bottom 1% - surely the researchers on this project should be hearing the alarm bells.  This is flawed so I am with other colleagues below this needs a review by the RSA as it is not a good exercise - drop the league tables and scoring.

I agree with Steb and Graham. The concept of ranking areas is unhelpful.  Information is helpful both to people in a particular area and those who visit. Percentages are not helpful - and what is a local authority to do about, say, a lack of 'industrial heritage'? Governments over the last 20 years have been obsessed with tables and rank order; has that been a good thing? Applying it to heritage does not seem the wisest approach. 

As an Australian, born in the London, I think that this is the most wonderful project.  Congratulations to all involved.  I will be contacting friends here to see if something similar might be created.  We have more than 40,000 years of heritage to collect.

The only misgiving I have is that of ranking locations and communities.  Identity is not something to be ranked, but simply enjoyed and celebrated.