The Listing Programme

We consider buildings for listing in three main ways.

Spotlisting

We look at individual buildings, hundreds of which are brought to our attention each year by local authorities, amenity and historical societies, and individual members of the public. Without this public interest, many important buildings might be lost or damaged.

Area lists

 Since the 1970s the number of listed buildings has increased fourfold through our national re-survey of England's built heritage, which has just been completed. Every part of England was visited by expert fieldworkers, supervised by English Heritage, and the best buildings selected against the listing criteria.

Thematic listing

Our priority now is to focus our attention on particular building types which are under-represented in the lists, through our Thematic Listing Programme. Recent and current areas of work include:

• Industrial heritage: our work here is closely related to the industrial component of the Monuments Protection Programme. Work so far has included the lead mining and textile manufacturing industries, and post-war industrial buildings.
• Pubs: pubs have become increasingly standardised in recent years, and although many hundreds of pubs are already listed for their age or architectural qualities, very few have been listed for their importance as pubs. This means that the importance of many pub interiors has not been fully appreciated. We have launched a campaign which aims to make the public more aware of how the listing criteria are applied to pubs, to ensure that this interesting part of our heritage is adequately protected.
• Industrial cities: the area lists for Liverpool and Manchester, are already being reviewed to take account of our increased appreciation of the industrial significance of many of their buildings, particularly their warehouses.
• The defence of Britain: the significance of many buildings associated with national defence, including barracks, dockyards, and airfield structures, has only recently been fully understood. Surveys carried out with the co-operation of the Ministry of Defence will ensure that the most important buildings will be protected.

Post-war listing

Recommending modern buildings for listing causes more controversy than any other English Heritage activity. In 1987 the principle was established that post-war buildings could be listed, and by the end of 1995 the importance of the period had been recognized by the listing of 189 separate buildings. In the same year the listing of post-war buildings was opened up to public debate and consultation, in recognition of the strong views many people hold on the subject in general and individual buildings in particular.

We decided to look at the whole field of buildings dating from the period 1945-1965 by building type and held a series of consultations on all our proposals for listing in 1995 and 1996, backed up by photographic exhibitions and publications explaining the basis on which post-war listing recommendations are made. These have attracted much press coverage and enormous public interest.