WARRINGTON has been named the worst place in the country for making the most out of its heritage.

A study by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), which put the town at the back of the standings at number 325, found Warrington to have no listed parks, areas of natural beauty, battlefields, historical ships or listed pubs.

Despite having a museum and art gallery featuring more than 200,000 objects the town claimed bottom spot but officials have hit back at the 'provocative' survey, which will boost the case for funding.

The council and Culture Warrington have joined together in challenging some of the 'assumptions' made – the first being the report that Warrington has no canals.

Many of the suggestions put forward by RSA are already in place, such as plans to develop a state of the art heritage and archive centre, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Culture Warrington has praised the network of heritage groups established across Warrington following support from residents and community groups.

It also pointed to figures showing Warrington has seen the highest increase in cultural visitors in Cheshire.

Numbers are up by 15 per cent over the last two years, while Culture Warrington has seen a 25 per cent increase in event attendees.

Cllr Kate Hannon, executive board member for leisure, community and culture, said: "We have some fantastic cultural and historical assets in Warrington, which we are rightly proud of, and this ranking is not an accurate reflection of how successful the council and Culture Warrington are at engaging the community with its rich heritage and the activities we undertake to achieve this.

"We offer residents and visitors a great opportunity to engage with heritage and gain an insight into the borough's history through our highly regarded museum, which has just been assessed as one of the top performing regional museums.

"We have recently appointed a heritage champion for the borough and just last weekend we hosted the Your Country Needs You event, which engaged more than 640 people with their First World War heritage.

"We are continually engaging and working with a number of heritage groups to help create a partnership to ensure people value their heritage and we will be holding the Heritage Matters conference to engage with people and promote our heritage assets soon."

Plans for a heritage hub are currently being developed for to help further engage the community.

Jan Souness, managing director at Culture Warrington, added: "Culture Warrington has strived from its formation in May 2012 to showcase the heritage and cultural offers already in existence within Warrington.

"Over the previous three years with the Rugby League World Cup, Olympics and Warrington Festival programme we have celebrated the towns cultural assets and we have plans in place to showcase many more over the coming years."

The RSA has been collaborating with the Heritage Lottery Fund to better understand the links between heritage and identity throughout the country.

More than 100 datasets were used to produce a Heritage Index, with information ranging from the length of canals and size of protected wildlife sites, through to the number of historic businesses and the proportion of residents visiting museums and archives.

The Heritage Index is also designed to simulate debate about what is valued from the past and how that influences the identity of its current residents.

The City of London, Kensington and Chelsea and Scarborough were determined as the top three locations following the survey.