Listed Building Consent Advice

Listed building consent is required for works of demolition, alteration or extension that would affect a listed building's special architectural or historic interest, internally as well as externally. The distinction between repair and alteration can be subtle, and getting it wrong carries real consequences. Advice at the outset establishes what needs consent and what evidence an application will require.

Listing does not freeze a building in time. Sensitive, well-argued alteration is approved regularly, particularly where it secures a building's long-term future. What causes refusals is rarely ambition; it is proposals put forward without evidence of what the building's interest actually consists of.

Listing covers the whole building rather than only its front elevation, and it can extend to interiors, later additions and structures within the curtilage. This is where owners are most often caught out. Like-for-like repair usually falls outside consent, but the boundary between repair and alteration is narrower than most people expect, and carrying out unauthorised works to a listed building is a criminal offence rather than a planning irregularity to be tidied up later.

A conversation before anything is committed to a drawing is usually the cheapest stage of any listed building project. It is far easier to shape a scheme around what is likely to be acceptable than to defend one that has already been designed.