Taking on the ‘Heritage Cadet Challenge’ with Historic England and the Heritage Youth Partnership

As part of Heritage Crime Week, we’re proud to congratulate a group of our Police Cadets who have become the first in the country to participate in the ‘Heritage Cadet Challenge’ - a unique opportunity to explore local heritage while contributing to the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) through the inspiring Missing Pieces Project.

The project invites people across the country to share their own stories and photographs of listed places—those nationally protected buildings, parks, battlefields, shipwrecks, and more that shape England’s rich historic landscape.

With over 400,000 listed sites and 99% of people living within a mile of one, the project aims to complete the picture of England’s heritage by adding personal perspectives that bring these places to life in an online register.

This initiative also aligns with the goals of the Heritage Youth Partnership, which connects uniformed youth organisations with heritage organisations to strengthen young people’s sense of belonging and well-being through local heritage.

The partnership supports uniformed youth groups to deliver parts of their programme through heritage, develops resources and leader training, and enables local youth-led heritage social action projects.

As part of the process of becoming accredited 'Heritage Cadets', those taking part had a presentation on the different types of heritage crime and its effects on victims and the communities that they are in, plus the impact nationally to our heritage.

They undertook a structured training programme, which included learning to use a variety of online archives and developing imaging skills.

Using the Historic England website, they identified locations where there were ‘listed’ assets with no photographs on record.

These are required for assisting with monitoring the asset over time as changes are made, what condition they are in and if any action needs taking.

Rising to the challenge, our cadets documented a range of assets including buildings, bridges, a classic red telephone box and even a graveyard, covering all areas of the county.

Their findings have been uploaded to the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) and incorporated into the Missing Pieces Project, making a valuable contribution to the national heritage record.

The panel who assessed their entries were impressed with the quality of their work, commenting: “The Cadets presented their findings with great professionalism. They were a credit to themselves and to Warwickshire Police.”

Last month they gathered to be presented with their certificates and 'Heritage Cadet' badges by the Police and Crime Commissioner, Philip Seccombe.

Also commended for their work to bring the challenge to Warwickshire were Cadet Leaders Darren Lund and Robert Williams, and Police Support Volunteer, Carol Cotterill.

Darren said: “Our Cadets have worked really hard on the Missing Pieces Project, and it will become part of the programme for future cadets moving forward. They’ve created a real legacy with future generations seeing the work they’ve undertaken in documenting our local historic places and listed buildings.”

Looking ahead, our Cadets are supporting the expansion of the project within the county, and the programme is set to be rolled out to other police forces across the country.

You can find out more about the Cadets scheme here: Police cadets | Warwickshire Police | Warwickshire Police