What is the Heritage at Risk Register?

It is Historic England's annual assessment of designated heritage assets that are at risk from neglect, decay or inappropriate development. It records existing designations judged vulnerable; it does not create a new designation. The 2024 register holds 4,826 areal features for England.

Is being on the register the same as a listing or scheduling?

No. An at-risk entry describes the condition of an asset that is already protected elsewhere, for example a listed building, scheduled monument or conservation area. The protection comes from that underlying designation. The register tracks its state.

Which nations are covered?

England only. The register is maintained by Historic England, whose remit is England. At-risk monitoring in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is run by separate bodies and is not included in this product.

How current is the data, and how often is it updated?

This product reflects the 2024 register. Historic England publishes the Heritage at Risk Register annually, and we refresh the dataset to match each new edition.

Why is there no designation date on these records?

Heritage at Risk entries are condition assessments, not designations, so they carry no designation date. We set date_precision to 'none' rather than serve a guessed date.

What licence applies and can I use it commercially?

All records are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0, sourced from Historic England, with attribution returned on every feature. That supports commercial reuse provided the attribution is retained.

How is the data delivered?

Read-only over a REST API on a snapshot-versioned spatial model. Query by point, radius, bounding box or polygon, or fetch one entry by its stable id. The public type vocabulary is free to list for evaluation.

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Heritage & Listed Buildings

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Heritage at Risk

Historic England's 2024 Heritage at Risk Register: 4,826 areal features flagging designated assets at risk from neglect, decay or inappropriate development. England, served as EPSG:4326.

4,826

Areal features

England

Nation

EPSG:4326

Geometry

OGL v3.0

Licence

Overview

About this dataset

Heritage at Risk is Historic England's annual record of designated heritage assets judged to be at risk from neglect, decay or inappropriate development. It is a monitoring register, not a designation in its own right. Every entry is an asset already protected elsewhere that Historic England has assessed as vulnerable. The 2024 register holds 4,826 areal features for England.

The register supports condition monitoring under section 33 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, published and maintained by Historic England. Coverage is England only. Records are released under the Open Government Licence v3.0, with Historic England attribution returned on every feature, so commercial reuse stays clean.

We serve each entry read-only over a snapshot-versioned spatial model. Query by point, radius, bounding box or polygon to find at-risk assets on or near a site, or fetch a single entry by its stable id. Every feature carries valid EPSG:4326 geometry, reprojected server-side from British National Grid, with a centroid you can map. These records carry no designation date, so date_precision is set to 'none' rather than served as a guess.

Each entry shares the same identity and schema as the wider heritage and conservation registers, so an at-risk flag sits alongside the listed building, scheduled monument or conservation area it describes. That gives you one condition-risk signal to join to title, planning and valuation workflows.

What's included

Everything in the box

Spatial site search

Query by point, radius, bounding box or polygon to find at-risk assets on or near a site, then read each as a mappable feature.

Stable designation id

Every entry carries a stable id in the design.heritage.ENG.heritage_at_risk.{reference} format, so you can store, dedupe and re-fetch it.

EPSG:4326 geometry

Each feature is reprojected server-side from British National Grid to valid WGS84, with a centroid ready for mapping.

Honest condition dates

At-risk entries carry no designation date, so date_precision is 'none' and no calendar date is invented.

Clean OGL provenance

Sourced from Historic England under the Open Government Licence v3.0, with attribution returned on every record for commercial reuse.

Joins to heritage registers

Shares one schema and identity with the listed building, scheduled monument and conservation area registers, so an at-risk flag links to the asset it describes.

Data fields

What each record carries

schema14 fields

reference: string// Historic England Heritage at Risk entry reference.

nation: enum// Nation code for the asset. England only for this product.

source: string// Named public-sector custodian of the record.

name: string// Name of the designated asset as published on the register.

designation_type: enum// Designation family of the record. Fixed to the at-risk monitoring type here.

designated_date: date// Designation date. Null for at-risk records, which carry no designation date.

date_precision: enum// Precision of any served date: day, month, year or none. Always 'none' for this product.

category: string// Risk category or condition descriptor from the register where published.

local_authority: string// Local planning authority the asset falls within.

area_hectares: float// Area of the asset footprint in hectares.

source_url: string// Link to the asset's entry on the custodian's register.

centroid: object// WGS84 centroid of the feature as lat and lng.

licence: string// Open licence the record is published under.

attribution: string// Required attribution statement for the custodian.

Sample response

Straight from the API

response.jsonapplication/json

{
  "id": "design.heritage.ENG.heritage_at_risk.1456789",
  "reference": "1456789",
  "nation": "ENG",
  "source": "Historic England",
  "name": "Church of St Mary, High Street",
  "designation_type": "heritage_at_risk",
  "designated_date": null,
  "amended_date": null,
  "date_precision": "none",
  "category": "Slow decay; no solution agreed",
  "local_authority": "Cornwall",
  "area_hectares": 0.42,
  "source_url": "https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/heritage-at-risk/search-register/list-entry/1456789",
  "centroid": {
    "lat": 50.2660,
    "lng": -5.0527
  },
  "licence": "Open Government Licence v3.0",
  "attribution": "Contains Historic England data licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0"
}

Use cases

What people build with it

Pre-acquisition site due diligence

Check whether a target site or its neighbours sit on the Heritage at Risk Register before committing capital, flagging condition and consent risk early.

Developers

Planning constraint checks

Screen application sites for at-risk designated assets that can shape consent, conditions and heritage statements.

Planners

Valuation and lending risk

Flag at-risk heritage on or adjacent to a security property where remediation liabilities can affect value and saleability.

Lenders

Condition survey scoping

Identify designated assets already assessed as vulnerable so survey effort and repair budgets can be targeted.

Surveyors