A University of Lancashire Project
Public Value in the Regional Visitor Economy
Assessing Lancashire's Cultural Heritage
Project Recommendations & Policy Insights
Stewarding Heritage, Shaping Tomorrow:
Recommendations for Strengthening Policy and Governance
Our report’s recommendations offers a strategic roadmap for strengthening policymaking and heritage governance within Lancashire. Drawing on empirical research, stakeholder insights, and emerging best practice, the report offers a pathway for more inclusive, resilient, and forward-looking approaches to heritage stewardship.
It highlights practical actions to support evidence-based decision-making, foster collaboration across sectors and communities, and ensure that heritage within Lancashire remains relevant in a rapidly changing world.
From enhancing governance frameworks to empowering local voices and promoting sustainable management, the recommendations seek to bridge the gap between policy and practice. Explore how these insights can help shape stronger institutions, protect cultural heritage, and create lasting public value for future generations.
Critical Recommendations
Offering a robust agenda for innovative policymaking and a beacon for heritage stewardship within Lancashire
Treat Heritage as Essential Social Infrastructure, Not Just a Tourism Asset
Policymakers should embed heritage within wider strategies for wellbeing, community cohesion, education, place-making, and economic development. Survey respondents strongly associated heritage with quality of life, cultural identity, local pride, leisure, and wellbeing, indicating that heritage delivers broader public value than visitor income alone. Investment decisions should therefore recognise heritage as a contributor to social outcomes and civic resilience.
Strengthen Planning Controls and Enforcement
Many respondents expressed concern about heritage loss through neglect, speculative development, and weak enforcement. Local authorities should adopt stronger heritage protection policies, prevent deliberate dereliction by private owners, require maintenance of designated assets, and prioritise adaptive reuse over demolition. Heritage impact should become a more significant consideration within planning decisions.
Prioritise Access and Inclusion as Core Governance Objectives
Access emerged as one of the strongest determinants of heritage engagement. Policy should focus on reducing barriers associated with transport, affordability, disability, mobility, limited opening hours, and lack of information. Investment in public transport links, accessible infrastructure, inclusive design, affordable admission, and better promotion would increase participation and generate wider public benefit.
Invest in Living Heritage and Community Participation
Governance frameworks should move beyond protecting buildings alone and support dialects, festivals, traditions, food culture, oral histories, archives, and local storytelling. Sustaining these forms of living heritage requires funding for community organisations, local events, volunteer networks, and intergenerational engagement programmes that strengthen cultural continuity and place attachment.
Establish a Strategic Conservation and Restoration Fund
Respondents repeatedly highlighted concerns about neglected historic buildings, deteriorating industrial heritage, closed museums, and assets threatened by demolition or underinvestment. Heritage governance should prioritise long-term maintenance and restoration funding, particularly for mills, canals, museums, libraries, historic townscapes, and locally significant buildings that fall outside flagship national heritage programmes.
Develop a County-Wide Heritage Education and Engagement Strategy
Respondents consistently called for greater awareness of Lancashire’s heritage. Policymakers should expand school partnerships, heritage learning programmes, digital archives, social media engagement, and community interpretation projects. A coordinated strategy would increase participation, strengthen civic pride, and ensure that Lancashire’s heritage remains relevant and accessible to future generations.
Overall Critical Recommendation
The research suggests that Lancashire’s greatest heritage challenge is not public indifference but a gap between strong public support for heritage and the resources, governance structures, and investment currently available to protect, interpret, and make it accessible.
Effective policy should therefore prioritise access, conservation, participation, and long-term stewardship simultaneously.
Summary
The survey findings indicate that Lancashire’s heritage should be understood and governed as a source of public value, contributing significantly to wellbeing, quality of life, community cohesion, cultural identity, and local pride.
Respondents consistently viewed heritage not simply as a collection of historic attractions but as an interconnected network of buildings, landscapes, industrial sites, traditions, dialects, archives, stories, and everyday places that provide meaning and belonging.
Policymakers should therefore move beyond a narrow tourism-led approach and embed heritage more explicitly within policies relating to health, community development, education, regeneration, and place-making.
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A central policy recommendation concerns access. Although most respondents reported that heritage is generally accessible, many highlighted barriers including poor public transport, car dependency, rising costs, disability and mobility issues, limited opening hours, inadequate information, and insufficient publicity. The evidence suggests that improved access is directly associated with higher levels of engagement, wellbeing, and perceived heritage value. Investment should therefore prioritise affordable access, inclusive design, enhanced transport connectivity, improved signage, better digital information, and facilities that support disabled people, families, and older residents.
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In terms of stewardship, respondents favoured a holistic model of conservation that encompasses both tangible and intangible heritage. Historic buildings, parks, waterways, industrial sites, museums, archives, and cultural venues were highlighted alongside dialects, local traditions, festivals, food culture, oral histories, and community memories.
Participants expressed strong concern about neglect, demolition, underinvestment, and the closure of important cultural assets. Consequently, local authorities and heritage organisations should prioritise maintenance, restoration, adaptive re-use, and stronger planning protections for vulnerable heritage assets.
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The findings also point to the need for greater education and public engagement. Respondents called for more school-based learning, community heritage projects, digital archives, interpretation programmes, and promotion through social media and local networks. Such initiatives would help strengthen intergenerational transmission of heritage knowledge and encourage wider participation among younger and more diverse audiences.
Overall, the survey supports a place-based stewardship strategy that protects Lancashire’s distinctive heritage while improving accessibility, fostering civic pride, strengthening community participation, and ensuring that heritage remains a living resource for future generations rather than a static record of the past.
'Measuring Success'
A Heritage Governance
Performance Framework