Advocacy is a team sport, so when campaigning efforts make a difference (for example getting heritage issues in election manifestos, or securing amendments to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill) it’s a shared success. Finding common ground is key to that, even though defining and communicating shared messages widely can be half the battle. We try to ensure smaller heritage organisations can join in these conversations and equip themselves with the tools they need to campaign for their issues, even if they don’t have any in-house advocacy capacity. It’s brilliant when our members take the initiative and contact their MPs to arrange visits, or share new evidence and case studies with us – it all helps to make the case.

Getting heritage on the agenda is also an achievement in itself, especially with so many competing priorities in a new term of government. Beyond that, success is creating the space to be proactive and deliver the evidence and campaigns that tell a positive story about our sector. It often feels like we are on the back foot warding off threat after threat, but it’s usually the advocacy which focuses on benefits and solutions which breaks through and captures people’s imagination.

Success in political and policy advocacy is often hard to measure, because it comes in peaks and troughs, and it’s hard to pin down specific announcements or policy changes to individual contributions. But I’m ultimately aiming for Ministers across departments to understand and appreciate the value of heritage for their policy agendas and to want to support the sector. We have seen progress over the years – for example there were positive changes arising from the Levelling up and Regeneration Act, and I hope we can build on these in future.