The Building Safety Act, and related legislation, mean that individuals working on buildings will be required to prove that they are competent to do the job they are undertaking. The construction sector is therefore working to develop competence frameworks to ensure competence is clearly defined for construction roles.

These statements have been developed by Harlow Consulting for Historic England, in consultation with a range of sector partners and stakeholders, including CITB’s Heritage Sector Advisory Group, to help ensure that competence for working on traditionally constructed and designated buildings is adequately considered when standards are set. They designed primarily for non-heritage trades working on older and traditional buildings, and are intended to:

1. cover the core Skills and Knowledge required of non-heritage specialists when working on historic buildings
2. be embedded within trade-specific Industry Competence Steering Group competence frameworks developed by Super Sector groups for installation and maintenance
3. supplement trade-specific Skills, Knowledge, Experience and Behaviour Statements
4. be of wider use for competence standards and qualifications, were applicable.                                                  

If you identify any Skills and Knowledge Statements for working with traditional buildings that are missing from this resource  or have any feedback having used them , please email heritageskills@historicengland.org.uk with ‘Competence’ in the subject line and we will consider adding them when the document is next updated. Any updated versions will be shared here.   

A note on version 1.5, September 2026

The original role-based level descriptions included in Version 1, published in February 2026, have been simplified into three indicative levels to make the statements easier to interpret and apply across different competence frameworks.

For ease of use, we have moved some of the information about the scope, process of development and implementation to the end of the document, and produced an excel version, also available here.