Survey - Council for British Archaeology vandalism survey

The Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University, together with Bradley Research and Consulting, the Council for British Archaeology and Loughborough University have been appointed by English Heritage to establish the extent of crime and anti-social behaviour facing designated heritage assets, including ancient monuments, historic buildings and other important sites and features.

The true extent of heritage crime has proved very difficult to measure. By taking part in this survey you will help English Heritage and other agencies with responsibility for protecting the nation’s heritage to understand better the risks and vulnerability of different heritage assets in different settings. The research also seeks to identify the characteristics of the main victims, and the main perpetrators, of heritage crime.

By ‘heritage crime’, we mean any offence which harms the value of England's heritage assets and their settings and could include crimes such as theft, removal of objects of historic interest, criminal damage, arson and offences of anti-social behaviour leading to harm to historic buildings, monument or spaces.

The types of heritage assets that our research will cover are:

· World Heritage Sites

· Scheduled monuments;

· Listed Buildings

· Protected marine wreck sites

· Conservation Areas

· Registered Parks and Gardens

· Registered Battlefields

· Protected military remains of aircraft and vessels of historic interest)

Knowing that many voluntary groups that care for and research their local heritage have an awareness of local issues, including instances of criminal behaviour affecting the sites known to them, we would like to ask you a few questions about possible heritage crime known about by your organisation. If you have more than one member in your group that would like to participate in this survey, please feel free to circulate this email to them.

The questionnaire, which is being piloted to a small sample of potential respondents to begin with, can be found at: https://www.survey.lboro.ac.uk/pilotheritagecrime11 (if clicking on the link doesn’t automatically open the page, you may need to copy and paste it into your web browser

The questionnaire will take just a few minutes to complete. All the information we collect will be kept securely and in strictest confidence. It will not be possible to identify any particular individual or address from the results. If you have any specific queries about this research, please feel free to contact me through the address below, or through the project email heritagecrime@britarch.ac.uk. Furthermore, if you feel the information you have does not easily fit into the questionnaire, you can also email us specific information through the same email. However, in order to aid the analysis of the data, we would urge you to submit through the online questionnaire whenever possible.