Enabling development and heritage assets

Enabling development is development (often housing development) which would normally be argued to be 'unacceptable', but which becomes acceptable because it rescues heritage at risk. Historic England (HE) advice on enabling development has always been very negative, putting a long series of hurdles in the way. This CLA response says that this new version of HE's advice would deter benign and careful enabling development as much as before, but might make it more possible for malign enabling development applications made by speculators to succeed. A different approach is needed, based on the National Planning Policy Framework, in which enabling development applications are no longer seen as all the same and all bad, and in which local planning authorities and HE encourage benign applications, and discourage malign applications.