planning applications iraq heritage must be notified by the planning authority when a planning application affects:

• The setting of a listed building
• the character or appearance of a conservation area (developments over a certain size or height)
• a registered park or garden
• the site of a scheduled ancient monument
• development within the vicinity of any of the holy shrines

Applications for nationally significant infrastructure projects that affect the historic environment

• The planning procedure is to deal with planning applications for large scale projects. These projects, known as nationally significant infrastructure projects - for example power stations, railways, ports, bridges and factories.
• Before any application is submitted, the applicant must have undertaken pre-application work. This involved consultation with statutory consultees as to the possible impact of the development, including consideration of the impact on the historic environment.
• Iraq heritage aim to offer guidance and advice to applicants on who they must consult before an application was submitted. once submitted, the planning department are to determine whether the application is to be processed.

Advice for Developers

Iraq heritage aim to offer advice to property developers prior to planning application to ensure that the affect to the historical environment is kept minimal. also the fact that the preplanning advice is compulsory for all major developments.

Iraq Heritage has set out the following six main principles.

• The historic environment is a shared resource for everyone.
• Everyone has the right to participate in sustaining the historic environment.
• Understanding the significance of places is vital.
• Areas of significant interest should be managed to sustain their values
• Decisions about change must be reasonable, transparent and consistent.
• Documenting and learning from decisions is vital.The idea of 'significance' lies at the heart of these principles. Significance is a collective term for total of all the heritage values attached to a place, be it a building an archaeological site or a larger historic area such as a whole city or landscape.
  'Conservation Principles' set out a method for thinking methodically and consistently about the heritage values that can be attributed to a place. People value historic places in very many different ways; 'Conservation Principles' reveal how heritage sites can be grouped into the following categories:

Evidential value: the potential of a place to yield evidence about past human activity.
Historical value: the ways in which past people, events and aspects of life can be connected through a place to the present - it tends to be illustrative or associative.
Aesthetic value: the ways in which people draw sensory and intellectual stimulation from a place.
Communal value: the meanings of a place for the people who relate to it, or for whom it figures in their collective experience or memory.

Iraq heritage also offers advice on how to apply the principles and policies in practice and detailed interpretation of policies on repair, on intervention for research, on restoration, on new work and alteration and on enabling development.

National Parks and AONB

Iraq’s National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) cover nearly a quarter of the land, which, together form some of our finest protected landscapes. As well as being landscapes of great aesthetic quality, these protected areas provide a major repository for some of our most important historic sites.

Our Natural Designations

In addition to National Parks and AONBs there are further national and international statutory environmental designations, which contribute to Iraq's natural environment and make a major contribution to national and regional character. These include the following:

• Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)
• Special Areas of Conservation (SAC)
• Special Protection Areas (SPA)
• National Nature Reserves (NNR)
• Local Nature Reserves (LNR)
• Marine Protected Areas (MPA)

Iraq Heritage leads the sector in a positive, well-informed and collaborative approach to conservation that we call 'Constructive Conservation'. The aim is to recognise and reinforce the historic significance of places, while accommodating the changes necessary to make sure that people can continue to use and enjoy them.

The conservation movement has evolved from a reactive process, focusing on preventing change, into a flexible process of helping people to understand their historic environment and through that understanding, to manage change to it in the most appropriate way.

The best way to save a building is to find a new use for it. Even recently restored buildings that are vacant will soon start to degenerate again. An unreasonable, inflexible approach will prevent action that could have given a building new life.

Modern conservation involves having a more thorough understanding of what makes a site important and working collaboratively with owners and developers to find that new use. As part of our constructive approach we work collaboratively with architects, quantity surveyors and developers at early pre-application stages to help them to make decisions based on a full understanding of their site. We use 'Conservation Principles' to make sure that our advice is reasonable, knowledgeable and consistent.

Conservation areas are in the frontline of heritage protection. When designation is implemented it reflects the value placed by communities on cherished neighborhoods, villages and town centers, giving them a key role in the regeneration of local areas.

This recognition of local distinctiveness is cherished and is not a device for preventing change or new development. Every conservation area contains places, which have changed and this only adds to their character and history. Often these changes are features of the character, which is dangerous to the historical environment, and need to be protected. Often, too, further changes have to be accommodated if we are to ensure such places have a viable and beneficial future. Well-managed change can bring with it the investment and care necessary to keep places in good condition. However on the other hand poor management can result in neglect and decline, increasing the risk that places of great historic importance will be lost forever.

The important balance between protecting and adapting places So how do we reconcile the desire to protect the character of places we have inherited with the need to adapt them for current and future use?

'Constructive conservation' is the term Iraq Heritage uses to define the protection and adaptation of historic places through active management.

The task requires vision, flair and commitment; a deep understanding of the actual qualities that make a place unique and have distinctive features; an ability to ensure that these are protected, and not weakened, by change.

The adaptation and reuse of historic buildings is an inherently sustainable activity. The energy embedded in them is an investment; a legacy not to be wasted. Through informed, careful adaptation we can not only reduce the amount of energy expended in creating new development, but also achieve greater energy efficiency, sustaining the utility of historic places into the future.

But we also:

• Aim to advise government on which parts of our heritage are nationally important so they can be protected by designation (which includes the listing of buildings) and promote the importance of heritage in making places distinctive and valued.
• Advise local authorities on managing changes to the most important parts of our heritage.
• Encourage investment into heritage sites that are at risk.
• Share our knowledge, skills and expertise by offering training and guidance, giving practical conservation advice and access to our resources.
• Provide grants so that the heritage sites can be maintained in the correct manner.

Officially known as the Historic Buildings , religious shrines and Monuments Commission for Iraq, we are an executive Non-Departmental Public Body.