Historic Environment Scotland

Historic Environment Scotland leads stewardship of Scotland’s historic environment as a public body and charity, dedicated to investigating, conserving, promoting, and enhancing historic buildings, ancient monuments, archaeology, designed landscapes, cultural landscapes, and intangible heritage like stories and traditions for present and future generations. Core values of inclusivity, sustainability, knowledge sharing, community empowerment, and innovation drive funding, emphasizing evidence-based public benefit, strategic alignment with national heritage visions, and collective responsibility. They believe enduring impact arises through partnerships fostering engagement, skills transfer, resilience, and wellbeing via heritage-led regeneration and climate adaptation.

They prioritize projects increasing understanding and engagement through archaeological research, outreach, learning programs, and public interpretation of historic sites; enhancing community place-making and regeneration via townscape heritage initiatives, conservation area schemes, and community-led revitalization of historic environments; promoting heritage skills and training including traditional building crafts, apprenticeships for young heritage professionals, and capacity building to address sector shortages; supporting climate adaptation and sustainable management like energy-efficient retrofits, resilient conservation techniques, and green infrastructure for at-risk heritage assets; strengthening sector resilience through resource diversification and advocacy; and conserving assets via urgent repairs, cataloguing, digitisation, and innovation in heritage protection. Funded activities span capital conservation and repairs, revenue-supported skills courses, volunteer training, educational outreach to diverse publics, and holistic interventions blending research, stewardship, and community activation to broaden participation, preserve cultural identity, and drive local economic vitality.

They exclude retrospective work without prior agreement, duplication with local heritage trusts, projects lacking public benefit or match funding, and anything outside Scotland’s historic environment. Distinctive as the statutory heritage authority integrating research, designation, asset management, and grants, they favor not-for-profits, community groups, voluntary organizations, public partners, and heritage professionals delivering national or significant local impact, with strong emphasis on inclusivity for marginalized communities, sustainability commitments, and community-led stewardship over private gain.