About us
About Historic England
Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England’s spectacular historic environment. Our vision is for a heritage that is valued, celebrated and shared by everyone. A historic environment that people connect with and learn from and that we are proud to pass on to future generations.
By protecting and caring for our historic environment, and through our research, listing, grant-aiding, planning and technical advice, we help our heritage have a positive impact on the world around us.
Our work is varied and diverse:
- Our Heritage Action Zone (HAZ) and High Street HAZ schemes, which support over 90 places across the country to use the historic environment as a catalyst for economic and social recovery and growth and we target our resources and expertise through national programmes, such as our award-winning Heritage Schools programme.
- We are the Governments advisor on the historic environment, and fulfil an important statutory role in protecting heritage through the planning system.
- Our campaigns and public programming work engages communities, broadens our reach, and helps even more audiences discover why the historic environment should matter to everyone.
- We are digitising even more of the 12 million photographs, plans and drawings in the Historic England Archive to make even more of this incredible resource available online. We recently launched our Aerial Photo Mapper.
Historic England: Our Vision
Our purpose
To improve people’s lives by championing and protecting the historic environment.
Our values
PASSION – We share our love of the historic environment to inspire and energise people
LEARNING – We listen and learn, and pass on this knowledge to others
COLLABORATION – We work with partners and we work together to achieve great things
OPENNESS – We communicate in a way that’s understandable, available and useful to everyone
RESPONSIBILITY – We are accountable to the public and we always act with integrity
Our Approach to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (ED&I)
We aim to increase the number and diversity of people who actively engage with, and support, the historic environment and continually look for new ways to promote the past in a way that is inclusive to all and that celebrates the cultural diversity of England’s heritage.
We also understand that you have a life beyond work: we have family-friendly policies and promote flexible working to ensure that you can balance your work and home life.
We are working hard to improve diversity in our workforce and have a diversity action plan that highlights our main priorities.
Our commitment to ED&I
Disability Confident Employer
Youth Friendly Employer
ENEI Member
We are committed to the “Disability Confident” standards and are proud to use the Disability Confident badge to demonstrate our commitment to ensuring that disabled people and those with long term health conditions have the opportunities to fulfil their potential and realise their aspirations with us.
In terms of recruitment, this means that we will interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for a job vacancy and consider them on their abilities. We are also happy to discuss reasonable adjustments to make sure that people are not disadvantaged when applying for and doing their jobs.
Historic England has also committed to The Good Youth Employment Charter and is a Youth Friendly Employer. We recognise the importance of the following principles:
- Creating opportunity – Provide opportunities for young people to gain the skills and experiences they need, through meaningful and good quality experiences of the world of work that raise their aspirations, skills and personal networks.
- Recognising Talent – Recruit young people based on their ability, talent and potential, recognising they may have limited experience. Ensure young people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority groups, as well as those young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds or those with additional needs or barriers are not unfairly excluded.
- Fair Employment – Provide good quality employment opportunities for young people, such as apprenticeships, graduate roles, entry level jobs and supported internships. Offer fair and safe opportunities and rewards in accordance with the highest industry standards.
- Developing People – Promote the development of all young people through on and off the job training and support so they are motivated to take ownership and responsibility for their careers, and they are equipped to progress.
- Youth Voice – Listen to young people. Actively provide opportunities for their voice to be heard within a community or organisation.