Heritage Assets and their Value to the Economic Growth of Peterborough

The variety of buildings and landscapes that make up the heritage assets of Peterborough help to embody meaning and notions of worth in many ways. The Dictionary of Landscape Architecture defines a heritage asset as denoting structures, features, and objects of historic interest and value that are potentially viable as attractions.

In Peterborough the heritage of the city provides places to live in and near, and a pleasant environment for work. The Heritage Attractions Group active within the city highlights that heritage also provides what English Heritage have called ‘option value’ as people derive a benefit from knowing they are there and can be visited in the future; this connects with ‘existence value’ where people who live in the city derive pleasure from knowing that such heritage assets exist within the city, without a need to ever actually set foot inside one.

The heritage attractions in Peterborough bring money and visitors into the region. Visitor numbers have gone up across the heritage and cultural sector in the credit crunch as people take holidays in the UK, and in Peterborough the average visitor numbers went up by 3% across heritage attractions over the last year.

While the tourism industry around specific sites is hugely important for the local economy, and we should maximise that, there is a wider economic benefit derived from the wider heritage stock of the city. The re-use of listed buildings for housing stock, for example, is both economically and environmentally beneficial 1, and encourages for the creation of sustainable communities. Historic buildings have a significant role in regeneration projects: a report by EEDA, English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund in the East of England found that every £10,000 of heritage investment leverages on average £45,000 of match funding from public and private sources. Major heritage-based regeneration projects have been hugely successful around the country, in Newcastle, Derbyshire and Manchester for example, and have created businesses and jobs as well as attracting fresh inward investment.

Heritage also has a value as an educational tool, and is used by organisations from John Clare Cottage to the Peterborough Museum as a resource for learning. The value is inherent in the pleasure people get from aesthetic experiences such as looking at the Cathedral, and in the volunteering experiences available in the historic sector from the Adult Education College and the PCVS. The heritage of a city is related to people’s concepts of their own identity, allowing them to gain personalised meaning from the environment around them.

Alongside this the heritage of the city provides a recognisable brand, a local distinctiveness that characterises the city and creates a sense of place for people who live and work in Peterborough. If we are to market Peterborough successfully, we need to ‘exploit’ all of its assets.

Alice Kershaw

1Useful Fact 1: Did you know that the demolition of a Victorian terraced house has the same embodied energy to power a car 5 times around the world?