Work with Your Council

Support your council

Find out who in your local council is responsible for streets, roads, green spaces and town centres and talk or write to them directly. This may be the responsibility of more than one part of the council or shared between two or more authorities.

If you have formed your own group, invite representatives of different council departments to your meetings so they can share their expertise and suggest ways you might work together to conserve valued features of your streets.

As a first step contact your local councillors. Make them aware of any issues you have identified, listen to their concerns too and ask them to support you in contacting council officers to seek solutions. To find out who they are, look at your local authority's website. Why not involve them in conducting your street audit along with other residents or businesses? The more support they see for taking action the more likely they are to support you. Remember they are local people too and will also want to see the area improved.

Our regional Streets for All pamphlets contain inspiring case studies from your region, showing what councils can achieve by working in partnership with residents and businesses. We recommend using these with your local council to show what could be achieved in your area.

Other organisations

Fortunately Historic England is not alone in wanting to improve England's streets. These organisations, some of which have local branches, are doing their own work to highlight the problem and would be glad of your support.

Living Streets

Living Streets works to create safe, attractive and enjoyable streets, where people want to walk.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund

The National Lottery Heritage Fund are one of the largest funders for conservation of the historic environment. They prioritise their funding to projects that involve people in conserving and enjoying their local heritage.

Civic Voice

Street Pride is Civic Voice's national campaign supporting local action to help rid our streets of unnecessary clutter.

Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)

CPRE campaigns to protect the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of the countryside. Its Clutter Challenge campaign aims to reduce the creeping urbanisation of the countryside from excessive signage, road markings and other street clutter.