Listed Building Consent & Heritage Advice

Expert guidance on conservation policy, heritage asset impact
assessments and listed building consent applications.

During heritage projects, you may want to undertake internal or external works to a listed building (due to its special historical and or architectural interest or if it is located within a Conservation Area).

However, it is extremely important that you obtain the necessary consent before work commences. Failure to do so might result in criminal proceedings, and local authorities can insist that all work that has been carried out is reversed, which can be both a lengthy process and very costly.

Heritage Building Consent can be gained from your local authority – and it is necessary even for internal works which is unnecessary in non-listed buildings. Furthermore, it is possible that both planning permission and listed building consent is required for works undertaken in the grounds of Listed Buildings.
In Conservation Areas, you may need conservation area consent for a demolition and or development.

At Apex Planning Consultants, we have experience in working with clients who wish to undertake heritage projects. In these cases, we introduce heritage consultants with detailed experience in architectural history to help make the best choices in terms of both the building and its past, and the likelihood of gaining the necessary permissions for you - the developer.

We will work with the council’s conservation officer to ascertain what consent is needed and also to get an outline of what sort of work might be acceptable and how, if necessary, we can adapt your original ideas to make the chances of success higher. This will save you both time and expense further down the line. However, we also assess this advice from the conservation officers and help to advise clients where we believe it to be incorrect, such that a heritage projects proposal might be shown to be acceptable.

We also work with clients who have found themselves at the wrong end of this process, who have not gained the correct permissions or have bought a property that has not been developed according to the constraints laid out by Listed Building and Conservation Area requirements. In these cases, we have successfully negotiated with the local planning authority to come to an agreement that works for both parties. It is usually highly likely that some extra works need to be undertaken, but we have been able to manage the process to make it less costly for our clients. However, we would always advise that the correct procedure is undertaken in the first place, which means obtaining the relevant consent.

To learn more about our work with Heritage Buildings and in Conservation Areas for heritage projects, take a look at our blog here.

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