You don’t have to avoid Listed Buildings

Many of our clients specify ‘No Listed Buildings’ when we meet up to discuss their search criteria. In Devon and West Somerset this could rule out many of the most attractive and desirable houses that could be available at the time.

Our advice is to keep an open mind. Owning a listed building is not as onerous as many people think, that is as long as it’s not about to fall down. In most cases there is still plenty of scope to improve and extend – just take a sensitive and flexible approach and you will find that the Listed Building Officers are willing to work with you.

It helps to choose an Architect who has gained planning permission for other owners of listed buildings for the type of work that you are looking to do. They will understand all of the different stakeholders and the boxes that need to be ticked. They will usually recommend pre-planning meetings on site to get buy-in and advice from the Conservation Team before anything is submitted. Including what they have advised is essential as it gives them input and ownership, and a certain amount of bargaining can be discussed at this early stage to achieve compromise.

You can build an extension, but it can’t interfere with the integrity of the original building, so needs to look different and subordinate, or even be separated a glass corridor.

If you are not permitted to replace draughty old windows with something that might have a chance of keeping some warmth inside the building, you might be able to propose ultra-thin double-glazing and a design that does not use thicker casements than the originals.

When you start work, there are extra steps in the approval process to sign off the materials that you have been permitted to use, to check that they are the correct type and colour. This does mean that your build costs can cost more and take longer.

Clearly no government should want to make it impossible for any of us to insulate our homes and make them more energy efficient when the planet is at the tipping point for global warming. It doesn’t make any sense to let heat generated by burning fossil fuels leak straight out of the windows, doors, walls, and roof when it could be kept within the home. So, attitudes and restrictions will have to change.

The Listed Property Owners Club is running a grass roots campaign to apply pressure and push for the changes we all need. Up until 2012 you could claim back VAT of all works and they’d like to see this reinstated, as well as other issues: easing up listed building consent, boosting Council resource levels, ending confusion for owners with curtilage reforms, making sure wildlife surveys are only carried out when needed and making sure that owners are not penalised for historic alterations that were completed many years before. If. You already own a listed building it is worth lending your support to this worthy cause and writing to your MP.