7268 Review of HER enhancement projects for the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic

Tender description

As part of the National Heritage Protection Plan (NHPP), Historic England (then called English Heritage) funded a number of projects to improve the information about early prehistory (the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic) that was available on Historic Environment Records (HERs). These were commissioned through a call for proposals which did not specify a particular methodology but invited individual local authorities to devise their own approaches. With most of these projects successfully completed and a second round of enhancement projects anticipated as part of the Historic England Action Plan, we now wish to review the different approaches taken and set out what the sector considers to be best practice for this kind of work. This will not only help ensure that future HE funding is used most appropriately and effectively but also, recognising that we can only directly assist a handful of the 85 or more HERs in England, provide helpful guidance for local authorities seeking to undertake such work with other sources of funding.