Our Offices and Services Affected by Coronavirus

Following the latest advice from Government in relation to COVID-19 (coronavirus), we have closed all our sites and offices until further notice.

Our staff are working from home and we'll continue to provide advice and process grant payments as usual. We’re doing what we can to maintain our level of response to planning and listing applications and general enquiries, but please do bear with us if responses are a little slower than usual.

On this page
  1. Contacting Historic England
  2. An update on affected services
  3. Planning advice services
  4. Listing of buildings, other sites and enquiries
  5. Our national training programmes
  6. International Leadership Programme
  7. Current consultations on our guidance
  8. Information for suppliers
  9. SHINE support for countryside stewardship funding

Contacting Historic England

Our local teams remain the best first point of call so if you need to contact us, please email your region as normal:

Journalists with media enquiries should email [email protected] or call 020 7973 3250.

An update on affected services

The site is now closed to the public until further notice.

We do not expect any grant-aided properties to be open at the current time. Anyone that has received a grant from us (or English Heritage before April 2015) will not be required to provide public access until further notice.

Rest assured, we will continue to process grant payments as usual. If you’re concerned about specific grant conditions, please contact the named people on your grant offer. We're not making site visits at the moment. If you’re worried that you need a site visit in order for a payment to be made, please contact us for help. We will do our utmost to ensure that contractors are paid for work they’ve done, even if it is an interim or partial payment pending a detailed inspection. Read more

We have now resumed recruitment, find our latest vacancies.

We are working to partially reopen our offices, although the majority of our staff are still working from home.

The Visitor Centre is now open again on Saturdays only. Read more

The Archive’s Public Search Room and Library are not currently open to visitors. We look forward to welcoming you back and are working hard to ensure our public areas are Covid19 safe ready for visitors, however, due to a number of factors this will not be until at least May 2021, and will be subject to government guidelines.  

You can still search over a million records for photographs, plans and drawings of buildings and archaeological sites online and we are making services available when we can so please keep checking back.

We have suspended our national programmes of face-to-face and classroom-based Historic Environment Training. Read more

Planning advice services

It’s likely that planning consents and permissions will take longer than normal, so do please bear with us. We work closely with all local authorities in England and will continue to do our best to provide input into planning cases as quickly as we can.

Listing of buildings, other sites and enquiries

Requests for listing or amendments will take longer than normal but we continue to process cases as best we can.

It’s unlikely that we’ll be able to assess new cases in the usual way but it’s still very important that you tell us about really urgent cases. Where you have good reason to believe that a site is under immediate threat, please email [email protected] and highlight the urgency of the case.

Please be assured that we will respond to all enquiries as quickly as we are able under the circumstances but there is likely to be some delay.

GLAAS and the GLHER

The Greater London Archaeological Advisory Service and Historic Environment Record is still working, but from home at reduced capacity. As a result it may take us longer than normal to process enquiries, and priority HER searches will not be possible. Site visits will only be possible in special circumstances and some archaeological fieldwork may have to be postponed. Please contact your case officer to discuss concerns.

Our national training programmes

This affects our face-to-face and classroom based courses only. It’ll help to protect the health of our speakers, the delegates and the people who work at event venues. We’ll reschedule as many events as possible for later in the year and where appropriate we’ll provide online training as an alternative. Please see our online training webpages for information.

International Leadership Programme

Our International Leadership Programme has been postponed until further notice. Please email [email protected] if you have any questions or would like to be notified about future programmes.

Current consultations on our guidance

Any consultations can be found on our guidance open for consultation page.

Where there are live Government consultations affecting heritage (many of which are included in Historic England’s monthly Planning Bulletin) and more time is needed for heritage organisations to respond, we will ask for extensions. It’s helpful if you let us know if you’re concerned about your organisation’s ability to respond.

Information for suppliers

If you are a supplier and are worried that your work with us may be affected,  please contact your contract manager for more information and advice.

We know that the impact of these closures will be greater for some suppliers and contractors than others and new ways of working may need to be explored. Please do continue to communicate with your existing contacts at Historic England who will do their best to help as soon as they can.

SHINE support for countryside stewardship funding

We’re working to maintain the service processing applications for stewardship funds.

Find out more

Also of interest
Was this page helpful?