About Us

Advise and regulate

Learn about Historic Environment Scotland’s heritage management function, including in relation to listed buildings, planning and development support, and World Heritage Sites.

As Scotland’s lead public body for the historic environment, we’re responsible for making and maintaining lists of nationally important:

We also have international links through our work on UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The decisions we make on scheduling, listing and scheduled monument consent are published online, on our Decisions Portal.

We also provide advice and guidance on the impact of planning and development on Scotland’s historic environment. To support this, we:

  • share and promote good practice in development planning and strategic and project-level environmental assessment
  • engage early in the planning process and provide clear advice on applications
  • work with others in the planning system and development sector
  • provide guidance on a range of historic environment issues
  • report annually to the Scottish Government on our planning performance

We provide management advice to owners and occupiers of scheduled monuments, listed buildings, Inventory gardens and designed landscapes and Inventory battlefields. We provide grants for certain works to scheduled monuments, and pre-application advice and consent for works affecting these assets. We also provide advice on the impact of development on the seabed as part of our role in marine planning.

We promote our work through our range of publications and talks to groups and conferences.

Decisions Portal

Our Decisions Portal hosts all our decisions from 1st October 2015 regarding scheduling, listing and scheduled monument consent.

This brings Historic Environment Scotland in line with planning authorities in Scotland who already publish decisions to their planning portals.

View the Decisions Portal

Right of appeal

You can challenge certain Historic Environment Scotland decisions under our right of appeal.

Under Historic Environment Scotland’s heritage management regulations, a right of appeal has been introduced for people to challenge certain decisions regarding:

  • scheduling
  • listing
  • scheduled monument consent

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