Advocacy Facts & Figures

Tourism

• The UK-wide Heritage industry is worth about £50billion p.a. and supports over a million jobs (HLF 2016)
• There are 55,932 protected heritage sites in Scotland (SHEA 2024)
• In 2023, the historic environment generated £6 billion for Scotland’s economy (SHEA 2024)
• 16 million people visited heritage sites in 2022 (SHEA 2024)
• Visitors who included a heritage attraction as part of their trip spent over £3.2 billion in 2019 (OPOF 2023)
• Heritage attractions received 16 million visits in 2022, with 81,000 full-time equivalent jobs being supported by the historic environment (SHEA 2024)
• In a report conducted in 2016, it was found that Edinburgh as a World Heritage Site is worth between £1.2 – £1.4 billion (EWH 2016)
• 68% of visitors to Edinburgh come because of its historic vernacular, bringing an estimated expenditure of £1.16 billion p. a. (EWH 2016)

Buildings

• In 2022, 49% of dwellings had some disrepair to critical elements, and 18% of all dwellings had an urgent disrepair to critical elements (SHCS 2022)
• 32% of pre-1919 dwellings had an urgent disrepair to critical elements in 2022 (SHEA 2024)
• Traditional dwellings constructed before 1919 make up approximately 18% of Scotland’s building stock, a decrease by 1% since 2021 (SHCS 2022)
• 41% of dwellings failed the Scottish Housing Quality Standards in 2022, a decrease by 1.9% since 2019 (SHCS 2022)
• 29% of homes in Scotland failed the SHQS due to Energy Efficiency in 2022 (compared to 31.8% in 2019), while 10% (12.2% in 2019) failed due to not being Healthy, Safe and Secure properties (SHCS 2019)
• 5% of A-listed buildings are on the Buildings at Risk Register (HES 2018)
• In 2023, 90% of Scotland’s scheduled monuments were in optimal or satisfactory condition (SHEA 2024)
• There are 8,078 scheduled monuments in Scotland (SHEA 2024)
• 52% of Scottish homes were currently rated as EPC band C or better (SHCS 2021)
• The oldest, pre-1919, properties are the least energy efficient: 29% rated C or better (60% rated D/E and 11% rated F or G) (SHCS 2022)
• The average Scottish home was estimated to produce 6.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year in 2022 (SHCS 2022)
• Modelled annual carbon emissions of pre-1919 buildings of all dwelling types was 9.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year in 2022 (SHCS 2022)

Participation in the Historic Environment

• 35% of adults in Scotland visited a historic or archaeological site in 2017 – a 7% increase since 2012 (SHEA 2018)
• Scotland’s historic environment engaged over 17,100 volunteers in 2015 (OPOF 2023)
• Volunteers provide 121,000 days, an average of 7 days per volunteer to help conserve the historic environment, a contribution worth £14.7 million (Volunteering & Historic Environment 2016)
• 46% of Scotland’s historic environment organisations are run entirely by volunteers (Volunteering & Historic Environment 2016)
• Historic Houses Association Scotland has 350 Friends and 220 Members (property or garden owners) (SHEA 2016)
• In 2017 there were 79 Adopt a Monument Projects, compared with 32 in 2014 (SHEA 2018)
• 86% of people report a wellbeing benefit from engaging with heritage (OPOF 2023)

Investment

• Historic Environment Scotland, The National Trust for Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund invested over £184 Million in Scotland in 2017/18 (SHEA 2018)
• Around £1.93 billion was spent in 2023 on repairing and maintaining Scotland’s historic building stock (SHEA 2024)
• It will cost an estimated £6.6 billion to convert Scotland’s historic residential buildings to low-carbon heating (OPOF 2023)
• 10,000 new jobs will be needed over the next decade to maintain and adapt Scotland’s traditional building stock (OPOF 2023)
• The Conservation Area Regeneration Scheme has awarded £48 million to 69 schemes across Scottish local authorities since 2007, repairing 1,206 historic buildings and leveraging £120 million of additional investment (OPOF 2023)