The four criteria for assessing class importance apply to avenues as follows:
- Period (currency): Long-lived. The tradition of building and using avenues in England appears to have spanned much of the early and middle second millennium RCYBC if not longer.
- Rarity: Very rare. Less than 20 avenues are known in England with any degree of certainty, and some of these are only known from antiquarian sources. Long avenues are more rare than the short ones according to present evidence.
- Diversity (form): High. Six main types of avenue can currntly be recognized on the basis of ground-plan and construction technique.
- Period (representativity): Medium. Avenues are one of a fairly small number of monument classes characteristic of the early Bronze Age period, but they do not embody very much that is especially representative of the period as a whole.
Assigning scores to these criteria following the system set out in the Monument Evaluation Manual, avenues yield a Class Importance Value of 45. This lies two-thirds of the way up the range of possible values (max.= 64) reflecting the rarity and long currency of the class. Examples representing the full range of types, and variations in size and orientation, must be included in the sample of nationally important sites although choice may be restricted by what survives.