World Heritage Sites are places of global significance. They are recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) through the World Heritage Convention, which has been ratified by 193 member states of the United Nations (out of 206 recognised), including HM Government.
Article 4 of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention states: “Each State Party to the Convention recognizes that the duty of ensuring the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations of the cultural and natural heritage […] situated on its territory, belongs primarily to that State. It will do all it can to this end, to the utmost of its own resources and, where appropriate, with any international assistance and co-operation, in particular, financial, artistic, scientific and technical, which it may be able to obtain.”
Paragraph 4 of the UNESCO Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (2017) states:
“Cultural and natural heritage is among the priceless and irreplaceable assets, not only of each nation, but of humanity as a whole. The loss, through deterioration or disappearance, of any of these most prized assets constitutes an impoverishment of the heritage of all the people of the world. Parts of that heritage, because of their exceptional qualities, can be considered to be of “Outstanding Universal Value” and as such worthy of special protection against the dangers which increasingly threaten them.”
The Operational Guidelines also say that State Parties have responsibility to ‘not take any deliberate measures that directly or indirectly damage their heritage or that of another State Party to the Convention’ (item h of paragraph 15).
Paragraph 108 of the Operational Guidelines stipulates that ‘each nominated property should have an appropriate management plan or other documented management system’. On behalf of HM Government, each UK WHS fulfils this requirement through the production of quinquennial management plans. The DVMWHS Partnership coordinates the production of the DVMWHS Management Plan on behalf of HM Government.
This document sets out HM Government’s requirements for the appropriate stewardship of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site on behalf of UNESCO.
Each year, new research helps us to better understand and appreciate the importance, in global history, of the Derwent Valley Mills, their communities and their valley setting. The latest version of the Management Plan reflects this greater understanding, and because of this and with changes to the UK’s management and protection regime e.g. through the introduction of the updated National Planning Policy Framework in February 2019, the 2020 Management Plan supersedes all previous management plans for the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.