The Heritage Alliance’s ‘Rural Heritage Advocacy Group’ have responded to DEFRA’s consultation on Environmental Principles and Governance after we exit the EU, with input from other relevant groups. The consultation asked how environmental principles should be embedded into post-Brexit law, policy-making and delivery, and what powers and function a new environmental watchdog should have, to hold the Government accountable for upholding these principles after we leave the EU. In our response, we emphasized the importance of including the historic element, as well as the natural, within any definition of the environment and called for an approach that integrated the natural and the historic.