HER Staffing

It is essential that HERs are supported by the provision of suitably qualified and competent staff. Recruiting and retaining appropriately qualified staff to run the HER is essential for providing high-quality information and advisory services.

Service Models

HERs vary greatly, both in terms of the size of the HER resource, and in terms of the level of service that they are required to provide. Recent research commissioned by Historic England and ALGAO and undertaken by Landward Research identified a wide range of service delivery models, and concluded that ‘there is no universal best-fit model’ for the local authority delivery of archaeological services. This report also concluded that ‘A key success factor is that all the service delivery models examined currently ensure maintenance or access to Historic Environment Records (HERs)... with 67 of 71 respondents maintaining an HER’.

In order to ensure that the HER is adequately resourced the number of staff should be commensurate with the level of service required. However, the most recent Annual Survey of HERs in England (2022–23) revealed that 45% of English HERs do not have a full-time equivalent (FTE) post, with those services being staffed by someone whose role is part-time or is shared with other parts of the service. A further 18% of HERs have 1 FTE, and 37% have more than 1 FTE. Within services with more than one member of staff it is likely that a hierarchy exists, with the most common roles being HER manager, HER officer or HER assistant, depending upon the demands of the service and the service’s position within its host organisation. In Wales it was agreed that each record should have a minimum staffing of 1 FTE.

HER Skills

Given the wide range of roles and functions carried out by Historic Environment curatorial staff, their skills and development needs are broad. Staff should maintain and improve their knowledge, skills and competence via a programme of training and Continuing Professional Development (CPD). A number of bodies are engaged in the active promotion of training and CPD across the professions and specialisms working with the historic environment. Both the Welsh and English HER audits require those managing and maintaining HERs to actively engage in updating and extending their expertise. There is also a requirement that the HER’s host organisation is supportive of staff training and development.

Information about CPD opportunities can be accessed via the Historic England Heritage Skills & CPD web pages and the CIfA career web pages.

The most common specialist HER job roles are HER manager, HER officer and HER assistant, each requiring different skills and levels of responsibility. Although the demands of HERs are all different, there are common elements to these roles. In general, an HER manager is responsible for decision-making, documentation, recruitment and the strategic direction of the HER. An HER officer is most likely to be engaged in the process of adding and enhancing data, dealing with enquiries and collections management. An HER assistant is likely to be focused on specific tasks, as determined by the HER manager, and may also be involved in other aspects of the HER, such as dealing with enquiries or collections management.

While these generic job profiles highlight the skills, experience and qualifications that are required in order to recruit appropriately, pay and rewards are usually determined by the host organisation, and there is considerable variation between HERs. For HERs hosted by local authorities, salaries are based upon the Local Government Association guidance on pay scales, and jobs will be evaluated by the authority’s own Human Resources specialists in order to determine the appropriate remuneration.