Each year, Historic England (HE) commissions a detailed economic study that aims to capture the economic ‘footprint’ of the heritage sector using national statistics disaggregated into subsectors, occupations, and local geographies. Using the latest available national statistics (2022), England’s heritage sector is estimated to have contributed £44.9 billion in Gross Value Added (GVA) to the UK economy in 2022 and supported the employment of over 523,000 workers (CEBR, 2024).
Like many sectors, the heritage sector has faced extraordinary challenges since 2020 due to macro-economic shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, growing cost-of-living costs, and escalating global energy prices. The post-pandemic evidence demonstrates a resilient and recovering heritage sector emerged in 2022.
The top three constituent sub-sectors of England’s Heritage Sector (construction; libraries, archives and museums; and architectural and engineering activities) accounted for over 80% of the total GVA of England’s heritage sector. The construction industry remained the largest constituent heritage sub-sector in 2022, generating £7.42 billion GVA. The next largest industry – Libraries, archives, museums and other cultural activities -contriubed almost £3.34 billion. Architectural and engineering activities contributed £1.86 billion. The heritage sector in the South East supported the largest number of workers in 2022, with 61,000 directly and indiretcly employed in the sector.
To read the Historic England overview of this research follo this link: https://historicengland.org.uk/research/heritage-counts/heritage-and-economy/economic-value/
Industrial Heritage Networks 