La Perouse Chinese Market Gardens are important to the local Chinese community in Sydney. It is a surviving example of the working market gardens that were originally widespread throughout the La Perouse locality.
Photograph by Karl Zhao

"It's only of local significance". How many times have you heard that said about a heritage item, with the emphasis on the 'only' rather than the 'significance'. However, local does not equal less.

Since the amendments to the Heritage Act in 1999 the difference between levels of significance has taken on a statutory distinction of some importance. Heritage items are now assessed as being either of local significance or state significance.

These levels are not hierarchical with one being more important that the other. Instead, they are complementary and indicate the contextual relationship for the significance of an item. "Local" and "State" are not about rank but are about context. Significance is relative to the community of interest associated with an item.

By definition, local heritage items are of relevance locally and of value locally. They are of the place and they often make the place. They are, of course, also of value beyond the local as part of the overall heritage of the state.

The administrative upshot is that items of local significance are listed on a local council's LEP schedule of heritage items. Responsibility for managing change rests with the local council.

This means that a local community identifies its significant local places and objects and then manages them in accordance with its own local planning requirements. These have been developed to take into account local cultural, social and economic factors.

It can be easy to assume, as a local resident, that our own locality is rather ordinary and unchanging. We see it, feel it, breathe it and generally experience it everyday. Threats to local heritage, however, can often galvanise a community. It may only be then that the community clearly articulates why a place matters. Suddenly, in the face of a threat, the values of the streetscapes, parks, public buildings, views, bushland, pathways, beaches or other aspects of the local environment need to be quickly explored and stated.

It is important that local communities don't wait for such threats to arise, but work out now what they value as their local heritage and seek to have such places listed on their local heritage list.

As technological and economic changes occur ever more rapidly around the globe, our own cherished places, our 'favourite spots', become ever more precious and ever more local. The concept of local significance in heritage conservation provides local communities with opportunities to develop and enhance their understandings of, and responsibilities for, the places they inherit and will in turn bequeath. There is nothing "less significant" about local heritage significance.