Select committee: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Recommendation 3
3rd Report - Protecting built heritage
Published 13 Jul 2026
Addressed to Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee Protecting built heritage All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We recommend that the government establish and lead a high street repurpose programme as a core intervention within the national reuse-first housing strategy. The scheme should require developers to demonstrate that reuse has been prioritised over demolition, empowering local authorities to designate High Street Regeneration Zones with associated funding and planning flexibilities, enforcing a strengthened use-it-or-lose-it regime for long-term vacant buildings, obliging public bodies to repurpose under-used town centre assets, and ensuring all repurposed homes meet modern standards of space, light and design. This could be implemented as part of the government’s upcoming High Streets Strategy, expected to be published later this year. (Recommendation, Paragraph 15)
From: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, 3rd Report - Protecting built heritage (HC 144), 13 July 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 16 October 2026 (deadline 9 October 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the report and agrees with many of its aims, but says it is "not proposing to adopt" a heritage-to-housing scheme and "not minded to accept" the national dataset recommendation, pointing instead to existing planning, funding and data arrangements.
- On housing, it "agrees" heritage regeneration and tackling vacancy are key priorities, but does "not agree" that national policy should require re-use to be prioritised before new build, citing the target of building 1.5 million new homes.
- On a national heritage dataset, it is "not minded to accept" the recommendation and is "concerned about the feasibility" of gathering and maintaining such information reliably and consistently.
- On funding, it says it "disagrees" that the National Portfolio Organisation model should be adopted for heritage and does not agree the taxpayer should routinely fund core operating costs, preferring capital grants that help custodians generate their own income.
- It commits to update the Committee on the Places of Worship Renewal Fund 6 and 12 months from submission of the report, and to "revert to the Committee in September 2028" on measuring heritage outcomes under the revised NPPF.