Built Environment Forum Scotland (BEFS) has launched its Manifesto in advance of the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections. As the strategic intermediary body for the historic and existing built environment in Scotland, BEFS has drawn together a call to action for the next Scottish Government. 

The Manifesto urges the incoming Government to create the conditions for a well-resourced, dynamic, and effective built and historic environment sector; without recognising and leveraging the benefits brought by the sustainable use of Scotland’s existing built assets, critical climate and wellbeing targets will not be met. 

The Manifesto outlines how essential investment is key to unlocking substantial value for public money and driving progress across vital public policy portfolios, including environmental sustainability, skills and economic development, housing, poverty, and health – unlocking the immense potential of our built heritage to deliver warmer homes, local employment, thriving town centres, and much more. 

Interconnected Benefits for People and Places 

The built and historic environment, both rural and urban, contributes profoundly to the quality and character of Scotland’s places, its economy, and the wellbeing of its people. Encompassing everything from ancient monuments and historic buildings to townscapes and public spaces, it influences – and is influenced by – many public policy areas. 

BEFS five main Manifesto policy areas are designed to demonstrate how a joined-up and strategic approach will deliver towards the long-term benefit of Scotland’s people and places. 

15 Practical Policy Recommendations 

BEFS Manifesto features 15 practical policy recommendations and calls on cross-party buy in towards implementation in the next term of Parliament – and beyond.

Culture and Heritage

• Scale up built environment and heritage investment programmes, leveraging value across portfolios 

• Support Historic Environment Scotland as the lead public body to leverage the benefits of the historic environment for Scotland’s people and places 

• Adopt Fair Funding principles set out by Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) 

• Additional investments in historic and built environment data collection and research programmes 

Climate Emergency and Net Zero

• Investigate the international experience with Material Passport schemes and consider adopting a suitable model in Scotland 

• Holistic approach to existing and new climate emergency legislation; ensuring wider policy alignment, and consistent cross-party support beyond parliamentary cycles

Repair, Maintenance and Retrofit

• Implement all three recommendations from the Tenement Maintenance Working Group: Five Yearly Inspections, Compulsory Owners Associations, and Building Reserve Funds 

• Establish a Ministerial Oversight Group on Retrofit, to devise and deliver a Retrofit Delivery Plan 

• Increase provision of trained specialists to advise planning authorities on sustainability for the existing built environment

Training and Skills

• Invest in a national programme for training delivery across a variety of traditional building and wider construction skills 

• Invest in preventative spend across built environment specialisms to meet Net Zero, place-making, and heritage targets, and to reverse the decline of essential skills 

• Recognise the cross-cutting benefits of investing both in skills provision and training but also the culture shift required towards greater recognition of these skills as desirable careers 

Planning and Placemaking

• Explore development of the Fourth National Planning Framework into a fully interactive online resource including guidance documents and signposts to linked policy initiatives 

• Commit to investment in and enabling pathways to bring vacant and derelict land and buildings back into use at scale 

• Integrate heritage and tourism activity and aspirations into Community Wealth Building action plans 

Download the Full Manifesto here. 

Download the shorter version here. 

Download the Easy Read version here.

More information, including data, evidence and the details of the themes outlined above can be found in BEFS’s full Manifesto document. 

About This Manifesto 

BEFS Team would like to thank all Members and stakeholders that contributed their time and expertise to shaping this Manifesto through consultation from March to September 2025 

In a time of a cost-of-living crisis, government cuts, and a growing climate threat, how do we effectively advocate for Scotland’s built environment?  

I’m Sally Pentecost FSAScot, Communications & Events Officer at the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and from  September to December 2024 I undertook a work placement with Built Environment Forum Scotland (BEFS) to learn advocacy skills to bring back to my organisation.  

The Placement  

A member since the founding of BEFS, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland is a learned society born in the Scottish Enlightenment and to this day is an independent voice for heritage. Thanks to the support of its Fellows, the Society has made its views known on a range of issues relating to Scotland’s heritage  sector and the built and historic environment.  

With advocacy issues in heritage on the rise, I worked with BEFS to trial a work placement to learn from their skilled team, which I could then apply to an updated BEFS resource, the Advocacy Toolkit.  

The intended outcomes of the placement were to increase my knowledge of advocacy within the Scottish heritage sector to a level where I am more confident leading on advocacy activities on behalf of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. It would also “road test” the idea of a BEFS Advocacy Work Placement with the goal of expanding the programme to other BEFS member organisations.  

Here is my experience of the placement. 

What Worked Well  

As expected, the knowledge-sharing benefits of this work placement were substantial. Through my conversations with Jonna Meredith, BEFS Communications & Policy Officer, we discussed the organisation’s plans for a project to improve Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Scottish built environment. I was also able to introduce Jonna to the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Scottish Heritage (EDISH) project, and its successor project, ‘White Thinking’ and the Failed Promise of Diversity in Scottish Heritage, which the Society has been involved in.  

Representing the Society at the Places of Worship Forum working group helped me to understand how collaboration happens in our sector. It also enabled me to start carving out what I think the Society’s role will be going forward when we increase our advocacy capacity; I’m thinking of the Society as a facilitator, harnessing our independent voice and Fellows network of heritage experts and enthusiasts to respond to consultations, organise letter writing campaigns, provide advice on shaping future projects and supporting funding applications.  

Furthermore, my career conversationswith the BEFS staff have been helpful in shaping my career goals and identifying what an advocacy position might look like for me in the future. By the end of the placement, I had road-tested ideas, researched other resources and toolkits, drafted a strategy document for updating the Advocacy Toolkit, refreshed its contents and made suggestions about improving accessibility of the document.  

Challenges  

Something that became apparent from diving into BEFS and their work is that the term “built environment” means different things to different people. There is also a difference between that term and the “historic environment”. Getting the whole sector to agree on one definition is a difficult thing!  

I was also confronted with a lack of data, both in terms of how intended audiences have used the BEFS Advocacy Toolkit in the past, and how successful advocacy resources and campaigns from the wider heritage sector had been. I also struggled to find any recent data on how people in Scotland generally feel about heritage, and where any concern sits among their other priorities, e.g. housing, healthcare and education. I was able to find some helpful data on volunteering numbers in Scotland, and attitudes towards related issues such as the climate emergency, which influenced my strategy for updating the Advocacy Toolkit, but in general, our sector struggles to collect data on public attitudes towards heritage.  

The primary challenge during this work placement was a lack of time. We had budgeted for four hours per week, or half a day’s work over three months, for this placement, which turned out to be insufficient to complete my research and implement any suggested changes. On top of that, a poorly timed cold knocked me out for a week. But as a road test for future BEFS Work Placements, this information was useful, and BEFS Director Hazel Johnson noted that future placements could be flexible and consist of half a day over six months or a full day over three months, building in contingency for things like sick leave.  

My final challenge was a question that I’m sure many readers will be grappling with in their own  work: how do we encourage more diverse voices to get involved in advocacy for Scottish heritage? Both in terms of the people working in advocacy roles, and the public who engage with advocacy. There is no one answer to this, but through the work placement we had many meaningful discussions of how we might tackle this problem. BEFS are actively addressing this challenge.   

Insights  

Overall, I found the work placement to be highly beneficial, and I look forward to seeing how this programme  develops in the future as BEFS continues to upskill and provide support for the Scottish heritage sector.  

The sector has a series of resources and toolkits designed to support volunteering and advocacy – for example, the Make Your Mark Inclusive Volunteering Toolkit, the Social Value toolkit, the BEFS Sustainable Investment Tool (SIT), and the Place Standard tool – but in my opinion, they’re not yet joined up, and are not implemented or promoted as well as they could be.  

BEFS is exploring the idea of creating a checklist or route map for all these relevant toolkits, creating a process to guide workers in the sector on when and how to use them to assist in their advocacy campaigns.  

At the end of the work placement, the Society and BEFS also discussed the issue of how we set the messaging for advocacy issues in the sector. What are the key thematic messages or areas that drive advocacy (e.g. the move to Net Zero) and what should the messaging from the sector be? Again, in any area of advocacy, it’s difficult to get all organisations to sing the same tune, but through their working groups, the BEFS communications team assists in coordinating efforts and developing the messaging that we as a sector should be amplifying  to get important messages across. This is something I hope the Society can also contribute to in the future.  

During this work placement, I learned that the heart of advocacy work is pushing for new legislation that increases quality of life for regular citizens. Due to their focus, BEFS uses the built environment as their route into fulfilling this broader objective and I believe that the Society has the opportunity to do the same.  

We know that research into Scotland’s past – our historic landscapes and the experiences of the people who lived here before us – is essential for informing how we can respond to social, political and environmental challenges today and in the future. Shared exploration of Scotland’s past also contributes to building relationships, improving mental and physical wellbeing, and creating a sense of identity and placemaking, which is all crucial for a flourishing society.  

BEFS is supporting its member organisations to advocate for this future, one cause at a time.  

Sally Pentecost FSAScot is Communications & Events Officer at the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 

BEFS is delighted to announce that it is one of seven organisations to receive Partnership Funding in 2025. The award will support BEFS in its core activity and work over the next three years, encouraging cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary collaboration to benefit the resilience of Scotland’s historic and existing built environment, and in delivering Our Past, Our Future, Scotland’s strategy for the Historic Environment.  

Over the funding period 2025-2028 BEFS will continue to work to increase sector capacity to engage holistically with key legislation, policy, and strategy; amplifying the value of the historic environment to Scotland’s economy, environment, culture and society and advocating for the existing and historic built environment across a number of key policy areas including the journey to net zero, traditional construction skills, retrofit and planning.  

With continued HES support BEFS looks forward to working with Members, stakeholders and partners – towards a resilient and sustainable sector and sustainable places for the future, amidst the economic and environmental challenges ahead.  

 Hazel Johnson, Director of BEFS, said,  

 “We are extremely grateful to Historic Environment Scotland for this renewed investment and continued commitment to a strategic and partnership led approach and look forward to working together over the next three years, towards a resilient historic environment and positive outcomes for Scotland’s people and places. This funding will allow us to build, strengthen, and deepen BEFS impact and ability to deliver across all areas of our work, working closely with BEFS Members and the wider sector.” 

 Gail Williamson, Grants Operations Manager at HES, said,  

 “We are proud to support the historic environment sector through our Partnership Fund award to BEFS. By advocating for the historic environment and engaging with policy initiatives on behalf of the sector, BEFS is one of the keystones of Scotland’s built heritage. Our ongoing partnership enhances our individual efforts, delivering greater benefits through effective collaboration. We are pleased to continue our work with them and support the delivery of Our Past, Our Future, Scotland’s national strategy for the historic environment.” 

For further information visit: https://www.historicenvironment.scot/ 

Across Scotland, churches and places of worship are for sale at a speed and scale that has not been seen before. There can be many reasons for a place of worship to require new stewardship, from diminishing congregations and changing demographics to a decline in the condition of the building itself. These are places which may have special status or designation, hold a significant and sensitive place in the lives of communities of place, practice and of interest, as well as being a major part of the town/city/village-scape in which they are found.

The Places of Worship Forum (POWF), for which BEFS provides secretariat, works to create a combined and strengthened voice for a sustainable future for places of worship in transition across Scotland – both in, and beyond, worship. To do this, there must be a baseline understanding of the issue amongst owners, communities, funders, local authorities and national government.

Why is it a crucial time for places of worship? 

The current and very real impacts of faith owners divesting of significant portions of their estate has cross-cutting impacts – and implications – for Scotland’s people and places; for the economy, net zero and climate targets, and wellbeing; these sites are too important to our communities, and our places, to not deserve strategic thought to ensure sustainable futures.

From streetscape to vital local service, this issue is a national civic concern rather than solely a religious or denominational matter. Communities, as well as congregations, all over the country are faced with deciding how to respond. It is about all our places, and their people, regardless of faith or inclination.

These spaces also support cultural activity, as local venues, meeting places and hubs for events. They give a home to important services such as foodbanks and community meals. We stand to lose not only the buildings themselves, but also the important roles that they currently fulfil within society.

As the number of communities across Scotland buying their local church or place of worship grows, the issue becomes systemic, and the challenges experienced by communities and their places of worship are not one-off examples:

• How to address the potential loss of the amenities that these community buildings provide?
• How to manage situations where multiple places of worship are sold/bought but there is no capacity to run them?
• How can communities find out about and leverage funding?
• Should a community be unable to reach a consensus as to how to proceed, what can be done, and to whom do they turn for advice?

Seeking solutions: Supporting Net Zero, Economic Recovery and a Just Transition 

These places of worship are a key part of our existing built and historic environment. We know that our existing built environment can support economic recovery, community wealth building, and a just green transition if championed and understood. It is:

• central to a potentially expanding skilled workforce, maintaining and appropriately adapting our environment, harnessing long term economic and environmental benefits
• contributing to a growing employment market – where repairing, reusing and adapting our built environment is a vital aspect of economic recovery and towards delivering Net Zero
• as a key resource, essential to Scotland’s tourism offer
• as a focal point of regenerative strategies (particularly in relation to High Street decline, and Town Centre Regeneration) enabling a sense of place and belonging
• providing skilled employment, as places designed to promote wellbeing, and adaptive buildings suited to new futures.

A joined-up approach – across the policy landscape 

If considered as part of holistic placemaking – for example as a consideration in Local Development Planning and regional spatial strategies – the impact could be significant.

The recent announcement of a new Planning Hub, sitting with the Improvement Service, could reflect and address the issue as a national priority. Positive outcomes for these places will be (like all planning decisions) both specific to each case, towards the best individual decisions for these buildings, places, congregations, and communities. Some will make incredible homes; some will provide community spaces, and some will remain in worshipful use for many years to come.

BEFS has previously lobbied for coordinated action and knowledge; co-ordination of the data on assets – cultural or otherwise – can enable a joined-up approach to decision making, informing action when considering the potential for assets to be transferred into community hands. Towards good places, the ‘right asset in the right place’, to know what might be coming on to the market and when, thus enabling a proactive rather than a reactive approach.

A previous lack of political appetite to engage may well be changing, given the scale of the buildings now at risk, and as MSPs are approached by their constituents. The message that reaches them must be clear, coordinated and unified in its approach; inaction will not ensure positive outcomes for people and place. Investment and support, multi-partner initiatives and solutions across sectors, directorates and portfolios will – working towards achieving Net Zero as part of strategic planning and placemaking decisions.

Places of Worship Forum (POWF) | Seeking strategic solutions for places of worship in transition

The Places of Worship Forum member organisations are committed to supporting places of worship across Scotland and aim to create a combined and strengthened voice for the sustainable future for places of worship – both in, and beyond, worship. POWF members engage with communities, assist in the transition process, and provide valuable resources.

To find out more about POWF please visit the website or contact hjohnson@befs.org.uk. 

USEFUL LINKS AND RESOURCES:

• Your Church Your Community 

This guidance has been developed by the Community Ownership Support Service, Heritage Trust Network and Historic Churches Scotland to meet a growing need from communities for specific guidance around churches and accompanying land. Taking over a building of any type is a big step for a community and brings with it substantial responsibility. It can appear a daunting prospect, but this document has been designed to guide you through the process.

• “Outreach to Ownership: Bridging the Gap” report

This report describes the outcomes of ‘Bridging the Gap’, which was a pilot research project conducted by The Churches Conservation Trust (CCT), Historic Churches Scotland (HCS), Heritage Trust Network and Churches Trust for Cumbria (CTfC). From January to August 2022 the partners worked with community groups in rural areas in southern Scotland and northern England, to explore the barriers surrounding sustainable community ownership of church buildings.

• Recording Scotland’s Churches Project

Scotland’s Churches Trust created an online form, to collate images and recording data in a single location. That can easily be replicated by small local groups, who have identified and sought permission to record their local closing churches, and we have developed a recorders’ handbook with advice and tips to assist with the recording and uploading of each church record to the HES Archives.

• The Sustainable Investment Tool

The Sustainable Investment Tool – or SIT – was developed to help visualise the different positive aspects associated with existing buildings and their related projects. The SIT can help us plan a sustainable future, have greater understanding of our places, and increase their potential and resilience. Exploring the different values of a place can help identify new ways of thinking, promote greater advocacy for projects, and perhaps enhance new funding and investment opportunities. Using the SIT can help start conversations around the wider benefits and potential that our existing buildings and places can deliver – highlighting the positive outcomes for Wellbeing, Climate, Culture, and Economy.

• How to take a Kirk into Community Ownership

Historic Environment Scotland blog – Kilmaronock Old Kirk Trust give their top tips for community groups thinking of taking on the running of a historic place of worship.

Image taken at the Building Sustainable Futures for Scottish Churches event in Paisley, at the start of November. Photo, BEFS.