Heritage and community value

The Localism Act of 2010 provided two new ways for us to seek to preserve those aspects of Fleet and Church Crookham that we value:

• Assets of Community Value
• Local Listing

Assets of Community Value (ACV)

Hart District Council has a duty to maintain a Register of ACVs nominated by the community. A registered ACV is afforded some protection again closure or re-development.  The ACV must be able to demonstrate current and ongoing value to the community.  Typical examples might be local shops, playing fields, pubs, community halls and the like.

FCCS has successfully lodged five ACV applications – all of which are pubs!

• The Fox and Hounds, Crookham Road, Church Crookham
• The Old Emporium, Fleet Road, Fleet
• The Oatsheaf, Crookham Road, Fleet
• The Prince of Wales, Reading Road South, Fleet
• The Falkners Arms, Falkners Close, Fleet

To see the full list for Hart District Council, search the Conservation section of Hart District Council’s website.

Local Listing

The Localism Act allows local authorities to maintain a list of ‘interesting features’ (it can be almost anything), that have some historical, architectural or community interest.  However, this is not an obligation, and Hart District Coucil has stated that it does not wish to create one.

We have taken matters into our own hands and compiled ‘local lists’ for both Fleet and Church Crookham. The purpose of these is to draw together in one comprehensive list many of the ‘things’ that make Fleet and Church Crookham special.

The main focus is on heritage – especially those buildings that have architectural merit, have a local ‘history’, or those that we have deemed to be of interest in any other way. But it is more than heritage. We have included valuable assets such as community halls, open spaces and the like. We have called our lists “Assets of Value”.

Our lists were developed from many different sources, but five in particular, are worthy of special mention:

• The ‘local listing’ originally developed by Fleet UDC and later updated in 2001 by Hart DC. This was very much our starting point;
• Input from Fleet Town Council and from Chris Riley – whose help is gratefully acknowledged;
• By surveying many of the streets in Fleet to identify other buildings and features that were not included in the ‘local listing’, but that seem to us to be of merit;
• We have received substantial support from the Fleet and Crookham Local History Group (FCLHG). They have provided significant input as well as verifying many of the items we have included. We sincerely thank them for their help (N.B. many items on our list include the phrase “FCLHG has more”; this indicates that further information is available from them on request);
• Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are courtesy of Mr Barry Toms of Woodley. His commitment to, and enthusiasm for, this project has been invaluable. He has our sincere thanks.

Due to file size, the list for Fleet is divided into four parts, alphabetically by street name, and can be downloaded from the following links: