Listed buildings and heritage assets

This is planning consultancy in England. Listed building law in Scotland and Wales is a different system, and we do not take that work. We are not conservation architects. Drawings are prepared by your architect or designer.

Listed buildings

A listed building is on the National Heritage List for England. Altering it, extending it, or demolishing it, in a way that affects its character as a building of special architectural or historic interest, needs listed building consent. Planning permission is a separate consent, and many schemes need both.

Listed building consent has no Council fee. The fee for any planning application that sits alongside it is on the planning fees page. Our fee covers the application and the written case. You approve both before they are submitted.

Heritage asset statements

A heritage asset statement describes the significance of the building or site, and the effect of what you want to do. Councils ask for one with listed building consent and with applications that affect a heritage asset. It is sometimes called a heritage statement or a heritage impact assessment. The job is the same: say what matters about the building, and what the proposal does to it.

We write the heritage asset statement as part of the planning case. Where the listing, the interior, or the structure needs a specialist conservation report, that consultant is instructed separately. We use their conclusions in the application rather than leaving the two documents to argue with each other.

Conservation area assessments

A conservation area assessment explains how a proposal sits with the character and appearance of the conservation area. Councils publish conservation area appraisals. The assessment starts from that document, then deals with the street, the plot, and the particular building.

Demolition of an unlisted building in a conservation area can need planning permission even where the same demolition outside the area would not. An extension or a new house in a conservation area is judged on the area as well as on the usual design points. The assessment is the place that case is made.

Locally listed buildings

A locally listed building is a building the Council has identified as a heritage asset. It is not on the national list. Listed building consent is not required. The planning application still has to say what is significant about the building and how the proposal affects it, because the development plan and the National Planning Policy Framework both treat it as a heritage asset.

The same approach applies to other buildings the Council treats as heritage assets even where they are not on a local list. Send the address and we will check the list, the local list, and the conservation area boundary before we quote.