Recent research shows that built heritage has a measurable benefit on people's wellbeing. If people live somewhere where there are historic buildings, the DCMS Culture and Heritage Capital Programme has calculated that the built heritage gives them a wellbeing benefit equivalent to £515 per person per year.

Of course in reality people may have a very different view of built heritage value; some people may have little or no interest in historic buildings,and £515 will represent different values to different people depending on their financial situation and attitude towards money. Nevertheless, the researchers wanted to take a quantitative approach to measuring the value of built heritage to wellbeing (because most previous studies have been qualitative) and they used a statistical model to examine the relationship between built heritage density and life satisfaction. The Executive Summary of the report says "The research findings show that there is a positive, statistically significant relationship between the density of heritage assets near one’s residence and self-reported life satisfaction. A doubling of the density of heritage assets within a 1km radius is associated with a 0.025 rise in life satisfaction scores. This analysis robustly demonstrates that living in close proximity to historic assets holds a modest yet meaningful link to wellbeing."  The model controls for other factors that influence life satisfaction including individual socioeconomics, demographics, health, and neighbourhood factors, so it does take into account, for example, the contrast between living in a historic village with several Listed buildings and a modern outer-suburb housing estate with no historic buildings. The monetary value of the wellbeing value of built heritage is arrived at by using the HM Treasury Green Book guidance on Wellbeing-adjusted Life Years. Nationally, the value is estimated at around £29 billion. So this should be some encouragement to the very many people who are responsible for maintaining and caring for historic buildings, that it is benefitting people's wellbeing as well as all the important functions which historic buildings serve.