World Heritage Sites.
Places of outstanding universal value. They are designated heritage assets of the highest significance, and the protection extends to their setting and to views towards them.
- Development outside protected views
- Sensitive repair and adaptation
- Schemes enhancing the site’s presentation
- Anything within the buffer zone
- Height in a protected view corridor
- Changes to approaches and streetscape
- Substantial harm to outstanding universal value
- Tall buildings breaking a protected silhouette
World Heritage Sites are treated as designated heritage assets of the highest significance. Substantial harm to, or loss of, such an asset should be wholly exceptional; less than substantial harm must be weighed against the public benefits of the proposal.
What is protected is outstanding universal value, which usually includes the setting and specific views. In London that is why tall buildings some distance from a site can still be refused — the effect is on the view, not the fabric.
A heritage impact assessment framed around outstanding universal value — not generic significance — is what the decision turns on. Verified views are worth commissioning before the massing is fixed.
How schemes actually fare inside this designation — approval rates, appeal survival, which authorities apply it hardest — needs the designation joined to the decision record. That join isn’t built, so those figures aren’t published here. We won’t estimate them.
Check the protected views as well as the boundary — the constraint often bites at distance.