World Heritage UK

Who we are

World Heritage UK (WHUK) is a registered charity established in 2015, that works with and on behalf of all the UK’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites, across all four home nations and in four overseas territories, supporting the Sites and their managers through the organisation’s many years of strategic and operational World Heritage experience. WHUK currently operates with a 0.6 FTE General Manager, a 0.1 FTE Financial Manager and 12 volunteer Trustees (all with past or current World Heritage operations and charity management experience) and a volunteer President (one of the UK’s leading experts on World Heritage). WHUK is the only organisation entirely focused on World Heritage in the UK. WHUK is a small charity, but it is one with a significant impact.

WHUK works towards a more just and sustainable society by supporting UNESCO’s foundational aim of ‘building peace in the minds of women and men’ and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. WHUK has skills and experience which support the Sites and their people to manage and conserve their Outstanding Universal Value (the characteristics that make them globally significant and the measures which sustain this significance in perpetuity). WHUK’s work includes:

• Advocating the importance and value of World Heritage and the UK’s World Heritage Sites to a wide range of stakeholders from local communities to businesses and government, to build their appreciation and valuing of, and support for, World Heritage as a national collection and as individual Sites
• Sharing knowledge and providing training and networking for all those involved in the active management of World Heritage Sites, and helping their communities to engage and participate with their World Heritage Sites
• Promoting World Heritage and World Heritage Sites to multiple audiences: domestic (local and national) but also international; current and future; young and old; those engaged with heritage, and importantly to audiences new to cultural and natural heritage; to facilitate learning from the past, in order to build for the future; and to grow understanding, enjoyment and valuing of, and engagement with, World Heritage

Our culture and values

World Heritage UK is a place for everyone, and we are always aiming higher, aspiring to welcome and be representative of the community and sector in which we work and represent. We are a charity in which people are engaged and empowered to enable the World Heritage sector and the charity to develop and evolve.

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

World Heritage UK is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion for all its staff and volunteers. We are explicitly inclusive of all gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or disability.