Press Release with North Kesteven District Council:
Heritage strategy for North Kesteven needs your help
What are the places and aspects you feel are important to North Kesteven’s character and history – within your own town, village or parish or across the District – and what does heritage in North Kesteven mean to you?
If you can answer those questions and want to see local heritage enhanced over the next 10 years across the District, your views are needed to help shape the new North Kesteven Heritage Strategy at one of two workshops taking place:
- January 29 | 6-8pm at the International Bomber Command Centre
- February 1 | 10:30am-12:30pm at the Hub, Sleaford
- Spaces are limited, so make sure to book your place on Eventbrite here.
These in-person workshops are a chance to put forward specific places and aspects of heritage you feel are important and should be considered in the strategy, and you’ll be invited to discuss ideas and themes together with like-minded people also attending within activities led by Heritage Lincolnshire.
If you’re unable to attend, there is an online survey where your input can still support the development of the strategy.
Select this link to take the online survey.
North Kesteven District Council is working together with Heritage Lincolnshire to develop the draft strategy, with the Heritage Lincolnshire team using their expertise and experience to deliver the workshops and begin to shape the strategy together with the Council’s Conservation and Planning teams. The final draft strategy is expected to be reviewed in early spring.
If agreed and approved, the final strategy and its accompanying action plan will join up and oversee how our shared heritage and history across the District – from churches, historic monuments, buildings and open spaces to the overarching themes, topics and elements you feel are important – is enhanced and promoted over the next 10 years.
Through the work and stakeholder engagement already underway, five main themes have emerged so far for further exploration:
- Inclusion, access and community ownership
- Climate change and net zero
- Heritage at risk and regeneration
- Rural and aviation heritage
- Heritage tourism
North Kesteven District Council Leader Councillor Richard Wright said: “There is fantastic history and heritage right across the District, in every village, town and parish, and it deserves to be further enhanced and protected. I’d encourage everyone to take a moment to fill in the survey, or even better, join one of the two workshops and tell us what heritage means to you and what you feel this strategy for the next ten years could and should include.
“Although needing further development – and subject to change following the two workshops and ongoing stakeholder engagement – specific ideas so far which could form part of the final North Kesteven Heritage Strategy and Action Plan include reviving old heritage trails across the District; the development and expansion of heritage visitor attractions; work to preserve and enhance the character of villages; climate change training for community groups; and creating opportunity for people to get involved themselves in preserving local heritage; as well as projects which could be aimed at enhancing specific features and places.
“I’m pleased that the strategy will also map out all those organisations already supporting and working within our heritage sector locally, from formal organisations and heritage attractions to RAF bases and local schools, and may pave the way for a new NK heritage forum for networking and collaboration.”
Tracy Stringfellow, CEO of Heritage Lincolnshire, said: “We are really proud to be working alongside the local community and North Kesteven District Council to develop a useful and meaningful heritage strategy for our home district.
“North Kesteven’s heritage is extremely rich; whether historic buildings, archaeological sites or areas of natural heritage. It is so important that local heritage is preserved to improve people’s lives and local area for future generations, and we are pleased to help set out a plan for this in North Kesteven to be delivered over the next 10 years.”
The North Kesteven Heritage Strategy is just one element within the Council’s broad range of work on protecting and enhancing heritage in North Kesteven, through its teams including Conservation, Planning and Building Control.
In another stream of work currently, for example, the Council together with Heritage Lincolnshire is working closely with commercial property and business owners to wind back the clock by repairing and reinstating historic features using funding through the Council’s Sleaford Shopfront Grant Scheme. By the end of the scheme in March 2025, the town centre will be transformed with 15 different shopfronts being restored or having existing features repaired. The properties all fall within the town centre conservation area.
