Heritage evidence has a role in shaping planning policy itself, not only individual development schemes, including representations on emerging Local Plans, proposed site allocations and designations. This experience includes assessing whether allocations and designations are supported by the historic environment evidence, and setting out where existing heritage assets and landscape features already perform the function a new designation would seek to provide.

Relevant experience includes a Built Heritage Assessment prepared in the context of an emerging Local Plan, examining the justification for a proposed settlement-separation designation on the edge of a large town. The assessment considered the settings of two Grade II* listed churches in the affected villages, together with a historic estate boundary and an area of floodplain, and set out, on the evidence of a site visit and historic map regression, the extent to which these existing features already provided a robust and defensible separation between the settlements and the urban edge.

Across this work the emphasis is on rigorous, evidence-led analysis of what the historic environment can and cannot justify, supporting sound and proportionate planning policy.