In 2020, a joint team from Dorset Council and BCP Council were one of 22 in the UK that were awarded funding from the government to develop their local heritage list as part of the 'Build Back Better' initiative.

There are already several resources for our area that help people identify some locally important heritage assets. These include:

• local lists for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole
• Conservation Areas Appraisals
• Historic Town Assessments
• the Historic Environment Record (HER)

There are, however, several reasons why further work is needed.

None of the existing local lists have been updated in at least seven years, during which time there may have been changes to some of the assets on the list, or other assets identified that have not been included.

The lists are also structured in different ways, with varying levels of detail, and it is not always clear how the decisions to include assets on them were made.

Similarly, not all conservation areas in Dorset have an appraisal. Those that do are not always up to date, and some focus mainly on assets that are of national significance rather than local. The same is often true of neighbourhood plans and historic town assessments, which were not specifically concerned with the identification of non-designated heritage assets.