Given the centrality of communities to the care of cultural heritage, this chapter explores how the UK legal and non-legal instruments recognise the concept of the UK, as a community and as a network of communities. This chapter identifies and analyses the varied communities of care that directly and indirectly care for cultural heritage. These include international, national and local communities, but also institutional communities and those involved in law-making and policy. It also considers the smaller-scale communities that form to challenge the status quo and who seek justice, or wish to assume responsibility for the care of cultural heritage. What becomes apparent is the interrelationship between communities of care and the shared responsibilities at times for the care of cultural heritage, which is all too evident in the context of World Heritage sites in the UK.

The book concludes on a note of hope. The UK’s legal and non-legal landscape is often fragmented, but nevertheless facilities the efforts of communities of care, who care about cultural heritage, to care for it. This chapter sets the book in the context of being the start of a conversation about care of cultural heritage with a hope to expand the concept more widely in the future.