What is happening and why?

English Heritage has been reviewing its structure and developed a series of proposals that will allow the charity to meet the opportunities and challenges of the next few years from a position of strength.

All organisations need to review their structure from time to time and English Heritage has not done so for several years. In that time, our world has changed dramatically.

The pandemic and its aftermath led to lasting changes in visitor expectations and behaviour, both domestically and internationally, while many of our visitors and members are facing challenges with the cost of living.

High inflation has increased the cost of conservation work at our sites but significant and ongoing expenditure is still required if the condition of the sites in our care is not to deteriorate.

English Heritage is a charity and no longer receives or relies on regular funding from DCMS to care for the National Heritage Collection. Like many organisations, we are operating in a challenging environment and the aim of these proposals is to ensure that English Heritage is financially resilient and can fulfil our charitable purposes.

What do we expect the impact to be?

For our staff:

Our proposals would see an estimated net reduction of at least 7% (189) in our current workforce of 2535 employees. We’re committed to working with our employees and our Trade Unions to find ways to avoid and reduce redundancies where we can.

In the last financial year, we spent £25.1m on the maintenance and conservation of our sites and the care and stewardship of the National Heritage Collection is – and always will be – based on expert, in-depth knowledge.

We are proud of English Heritage's in-house expertise and committed to it – under these proposals, we will continue to have a team of more than 75 expert curators, historians and conservators.

The proposals give us the opportunity to gather together all those experts into a single centre within the charity and a more joined-up way of working will mean we are better able to look after and understand the great sites in our care and better able to share their stories with everyone.

For our sites:

A reduction in opening hours at a relatively small number - approximately 10% - of the 400 plus sites in our care:

• In common with many of our sites already, 21 sites would close over our winter season – the reality is that we welcome a tiny number of visitors to these particular sites when they are open at weekends during the winter months (for instance over one weekend in November, a number of these sites only welcomed 11 visitors).
• At 22 of our other smaller sites, we want to find different ways of sharing them with our visitors. This is because our usual way of opening isn’t necessarily suitable or sustainable at these sites, and for instance offering special guided tours, temporary exhibitions or partnering up with the local communities for special events will provide a richer experience than what we currently offer.

What stage of the process are we at?

We have started to consult with our staff and our unions on these proposals and nothing will be confirmed until after this formal consultation period.