UK Heritage Pulse – A Collaborative Research Project for the Heritage Sector
A community of thousands at the heart of the sector share their views and insights to help shape strategy and inform the recovery and the reinvention of the heritage sector post-Covid-19.
UK Heritage Pulse has been created by Historic England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund to ensure your voice is heard.
Visit UK Heritage Pulse to register, to see the full results, take part in future surveys and participate in quickfire polls on live topics for our sector
Latest findings
Heritage sector is concerned about financial outlook but committed to the environment
The second wave of results from the UK Heritage Pulse, a collaborative research project collecting the views and experience of the UK’s heritage sector, have just been released.
Our second UK Heritage Pulse survey – which ran from 9 August to 9 September 2022 – focused on organisational resilience, recruitment and staffing and environmental sustainability.
From the 247 responses to the survey, we learned:
Organisational resilience
Heritage organisations are confident in the short term, but this drops off when looking further ahead. Increasing costs and the rate of inflation are impacting confidence levels.
- 92% of organisations are very confident their organisations will survive the next three months, but this falls to 61% when considering beyond six months.
- 47% feel they can confidently predict their financial outlook over the next 12 months.
Recruitment and staffing
The sector is concerned about adequately staffing their organisations, particularly when it comes to specialist roles, and reliance on volunteers is a risk factor.
- 44% of organisations plan to recruit volunteers in the next 6 months
- 38% of organisations plan to recruit more specialist staff with 61% expecting it to be more challenging than in the past to do so.
Environmental sustainability
Heritage organisations are committed to tackling the climate crisis, but there are significant gaps in skills, knowledge and resources to do as much as they’d like.
- 55% of organisations have someone who is responsible for environmental sustainability and 53% have an environmental sustainability policy
- 30% of organisations measure their carbon footprint and 25% have a carbon reduction plan.
Find out more and take part
Visit the UK Heritage Pulse site to register to see the full results, take part in future surveys and participate in webinars and quickfire polls on live topics for our sector.
Join the Heritage Pulse panel
The information you share through our quarterly UK Heritage Pulse surveys will:
- contribute to making the case for continued investment in heritage
- Influence our work and ensure that what we do, and the decisions we make, are relevant and beneficial to all our sector partners
- help us speak up for heritage and its vital importance for places, people and communities across the UK.
In return, you will:
- receive updates with actionable insights that you can use in your organisation
- be invited to join in webinars to discuss the results around topics such as resilience during Covid-19 recovery, financial health, diversity and inclusion, and public engagement.
In partnership with
