As part of his ongoing support for our city’s bid, York Outer MP Julian Sturdy attended a meeting with various stakeholders to discuss York’s application to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
York is well and truly on the way in this process since being added to the Tentative List in September 2023 and receiving UK Government backing in its desire to gain this prestigious status.
After the meeting, Julian said:
This is a long journey and we have done incredibly well to get past the first stage of rigorous criteria testing. We now move forward to the next stage of preliminary testing where the potential of our nomination will be tested by UNESCO.
If successful at this stage, York will then proceed to the technical evaluation stage carried out by the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport where recommendations will be made by the Minister for Heritage following the engagement of various experts and stakeholders.
Finally, we would then look, if successful at each stage, to move forward to submitting our nomination to be considered by the World Heritage Committee.
Throughout this process, there will be regular meetings with stakeholders and the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport.
In this discussion, we spoke of the need to fine tune and define York’s outstanding universal value which we can then promote. Additionally, the need to engage in a comparative analysis with other cities who are on the Tentative List, as well as other locations that have already received World Heritage Site status.
The forthcoming election of our first Mayor of the new combined authority of York and North Yorkshire will further propel this project and will allow us to engage in how we can work towards sustainable tourism for our city, how to support our local and regional economy, and how we can continue to develop our city, which has developed and adapted over the last 2,000 years.
I look forward to discussing our application further when I meet with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport, The Rt Hon Lucy Frazer KC MP at the beginning of February
