Management Context

The historic environment is subject to a whole range of different management and ownership arrangements. These may depend on community involvement, include some communities but exclude others. While it is important to understand the official management arrangements in principle, much will depend on how they are functioning in practice.

Formal partnership arrangements, whether based on community ownership or interest, provide a platform to discuss collaboration. The scope for collaboration is likely to depend on factors such as the degree of openness and flexibility in management arrangements, the amount of time and other resources already committed by individuals and organisations to management processes, and aspects of opportunity and serendipity in the scheduling of initiatives.

Where there are no clear management structures or conservation plans, communities may well have established informal arrangements to maintain and manage the sites and/or their heritage (see for example the Hood Stones Case Study).

Even if there is a formal management framework, other communities may express values of communal belonging, ownership and custodianship, maintaining their significance through practices that may not be officially recognised or sanctioned.

Different understandings of what is appropriate in maintaining and managing a site and who gets to decide can lead to tension and conflicts. The relationships between stakeholders are a significant consideration in the assessment context and depend in many cases on the status of on-going or ‘live’ issues.