Heritage Conservation
Heritage today has come to mean the valuable features of our environment which we seek to conserve from development and decay. Heritage listing keeps places authentic, alive and useful by providing a balanced framework for managing change. Listing also produces information about the history and significance of a place to help owners understand and manage their property.
Heritage conservation and listing is not only about buildings. It is also about landscapes, gardens, parks, farms, streets, towns, Aboriginal sites, archaeological relics, bridges, dams, railway stations, shipwrecks and objects.
Places can have heritage significance for reasons other than age and beauty. Criteria such as design quality (‘aesthetics’) and connection to important people and events (‘associations’) mean the fairly recent and old, modest and grand, plain and beautiful alike can form part of our history and heritage.
Benefits of heritage conservation
- Environmental – Creating sustainable communities begins with retaining and recycling elements of value and the energy embodied in materials and labour.
- Tourism – Heritage tourism enhances long-term growth and provides the material to promote our neighbourhood profiles. Limited in supply, the rarity and authenticity of heritage places are attractions that cannot be built or recreated anywhere else.
- Community appeal – Heritage plays a major role in the appeal and life of neighbourhoods. Even heritage places with no current use, or in a neglected state, can provide the impetus for revitalising a neighbourhood.
- Increased property values – Through listing and conservation, real estate values can soar as the character and charm of older buildings is appreciated. Studies show heritage properties can attract higher resale values which can also extend to adjoining properties. Sensibly maintained, heritage properties have long-term appeal that grows with rarity and age.
- Owner support – Listing gives owners improved access to heritage grants, free advice from local council’s heritage planners on how to make sympathetic changes, and often allows a wider range of uses than the current zoning would otherwise permit. Heritage listing can reduce council rates and land tax when owners apply for a ‘heritage valuation’ from the NSW Valuer-General’s Office.
Debunking the myths about heritage conservation
- Heritage places are not inflexibly bound or ‘mothballed’ by listing. Listing is not intended to stop all change or freeze a place in time.
- No approval is needed to sell or lease a heritage listed property.
- There is no obligation to restore a heritage listed property.
- Minor works, day-to-day repairs and maintenance rarely need approval because they will normally fulfill criteria for exempt development.
- Listing does not exclude changes or additions or new buildings on the site, provided that these do not detract from the heritage significance of the listed items.
- Listing does not exclude the adaptive reuse of a heritage item.
- Listing does not allow the general public the right to visit the property without the express permission of the owner.
Please contact our Heritage Officers for more information.
