Key findings

Most reviews employ one of three models, the descriptive audit, which focuses only on identifying the heritage assets that may be considered controversial, the evaluative review, which explicitly includes the intention to decide on potential alterations to the memorial landscape, and the holistic approach, which uses conversations about heritage as a platform to address wider inequalities.

Factors relevant to reviews are wide ranging and include public opinion, a figure’s life and the historical context of their commemoration, the changing moral landscape, the immediate context prompting the review, the contemporary mission and values of the body responsible for the object, duties of non-erasure, artistic value of the object, historical relevance of the commemorated person, the location of the object, the timing of the review, the practicality and cost of any decision, and a wide range of legal issues including planning considerations, ownership, covenants, the legal authority to act and offences under the Public Order Act.

Courses of action – i.e. what might be concluded can be done with contested monuments, are described as the ‘five Rs’: Retention, Recontextualisation, Removal, Replacement and Relocation. Although the presumption in government and Historic England guidance is to retain statues in situ where possible, the guidance demonstrates that the ‘retain and explain’ policy is potentially controversial, with past examples showing how the ‘explanation’ of a figure’s life can be contested.