A controversial report claims several historic Lincolnshire houses, including Little Ponton Hall, near Grantham, have links with slavery.

However, the report by Historic England has attracted the ire of Deepings MP Sir John Hayes, who has called for it to be "shredded."

Historic England has identified four places in the county with a "slavery past", including Little Ponton Hall and Burghley House in Stamford.

The MP, who last year declared a "war against the woke, " as previously reported by Nub News, said the research was "no use whatsoever" and slammed the "£15,000 of taxpayers' money" being spent on it.

The report, The Transatlantic Slave Economy and England's Built Environment: A Research Audit, was compiled during lockdown when the homes were closed.

The section on Lincolnshire says Little Ponton Hall near Grantham has links to London bankers who received government compensation for their plantations when slavery was abolished in the 1830s.

Burghley House was described as owned by the Cecil family, who in 1724 married into the family of Thomas Chambers "a London merchant who had grown rich in the West Indies".

Sir John said of the report: "I first thought it should be shelved, I now think it should be shredded."

"It has no use whatsoever and it's indicative of an organisation that needs to be brought to order."

He further told BBC Radio Lincolnshire: "Of course slavery was awful and of course it was right we abolished it, but I am not sure we need to go through this kind of comprehensive report linking tangentially all kinds of places and buildings to that effort."

English Heritage responded its work is to "champion, protect and advance the public's knowledge of all of England's historic environment."

Last year, it commissioned the audit which brought together pre-existing, publicly available research into the tangible traces of the transatlantic slave trade in England's built environment.

The aim was to provide a comprehensive overview of the subject and where new information was discovered, improve the information about listed places on the National Heritage List for England, to tell a more complete story of our country's remarkable, rich and complex history.

A statement continued: "Our job is to focus on facts in an impartial way; we are not making moral judgements. By sharing knowledge of England's history, as told through the fabric of our buildings and sites, our aim is that they become better understood and protected.

"In the cases where sites encompass parts of our history that do not represent today's moral standards, our approach is not to remove or ignore them but to provide thoughtful information and powerful reinterpretation. This is summed up in our approach to "retain and explain" our heritage. We can do that in a more meaningful way when our knowledge is backed up by rigorous, academic research."

Historic England added: "As a public organisation we have a mandate to address the lack of diversity in the heritage sector and we are fully aligned with government policy and wider practice on this.

"We published our Inclusion, Diversity and Equality Strategy in November, following careful development and consultation. England's heritage is for everyone and our role is to ensure that everything which helped to shape it is fully understood as part of our collective history."