get their listed buildings in the right way it should look for free is...
Wait till some mug buys the property and then tell them that the plastic pipework outside must be replaced with the cast iron type of that period.
At a cost of 8000GBP.
Property ladder.
...or conservation.
Notice board in Aldi?
Then some prat shouldn't buy a building without fully comprehending what they're taking on.
MrHall stop knocking Aldi as a nasty place to buy goods
I'd rather pay 10GBP for something exactly the same as the one in the URL, than be ripped of at this price for the same item.
But it *is* a nasty place to buy goods. Less than 24 hrs ago, you were whining about a teenage employee in a tool shop.
The others like LIdl, Netto and the rest are also crap.
On the one hand you are bemoaning poor customer service in tool stores employing inexperienced 18 year olds.
On the other, you spend your time looking for cheap rubbish from dime stores like Aldi and Lidl.
At least be consistent.
Either go for quality goods and customer service at the price required to support this level of quality and service or go for the cheap-jack warehouse operations. I don't mind which, but don't pretend or expect that one is the other.
Either go for the low prices and don't bemoan the service, or go for the service and don't expect the low prices.
You don't get both in one place.
Of course they are,however sales figure would verify that thousands of customers enter the places daily.
There's a difference here MrHall if you havn't noticed
Quite right If people have the money to buy a listed building but lack the refinement of judgement then they should be legally obliged to do the job properly. Otherwise mock Tudor and stone cladding, block paving, laminate plastic floors and windows would cover the country and not just Essex/Reading.
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... making it a recommendation?
I imagine they'd be pleased. It will increase their customer ASP considerably.
Then it should stick to selling food.
There's no other time....
My understanding was that the house had plastic guttering when listed so the owners were quite entitled to replace it like for like. Meanwhile the Conservation Officer was relying on the Bluff and Persuasion Act (also sometimes used by BCOs ).
The real lesson from last night is that Listed = trouble: don't bother. Which in due course will mean that listing a building increases the chances of it falling down. Of course if you're a Conservation Officer you watched last night at two people working their socks off to further your agenda and earning less than minimum wage for doing so.
Yep. But there really is no visible solution, if you want a load of work done for nothing, what other option than mandating people do it for you at their own cost is there?
Listing doubles works costs and is a real pita. Not for me. OTOH there are a lot of very valuable buildings around because of it. There are quite a lot of people wiling to tolerate the downsides for the rewards.
NT
The flipside of that is not being tightly bound to those parts of the building regulations inappropriate to historical buildings.
Try being less antagonistic with the conservation officer for a start, and invite them round before starting anything. You always put them on the defensive if they turn up and there are tradesman swarming over the building looking like you might be trying to do things without permission.
I own a listed building and have so far got permission to convert the shop part to residential, knock down a wall turning a small living and dining room into a 20' by 14' living room along with 2 new ensuites, a number of roof windows.....
It's give and take and it's better done up front as then you have the option of over asking and winding back for your give.
For example the house currently has cast-iron guttering and down pipes front and back which are all knackered. In my original proposal I requested cast aluminium (to the original profile) on the front and back for reasons of cost, installation and maintenance. The CO came back with the expected preference for cast-iron and we compromised on cast-iron at the front and cast-aluminium at the back where access for repainting is difficult/expensive.
Another example is that I applied for 2 standard velux windows in the rear roof slope (for an existing shower room) in addition to 3 veluxes on lower single storey roofs which are currently asbestos but will be slated. They came back and said don't like the windows on the main roof slope at all plus the others should be conservation style. Final compromise was that I get the ones on the main roof albeit in conservation style and the others stay as standard velux since they can't be seen.
The point here is that I always wanted conservation style rooflights on the main roof because I'm not an architectural hooligan, but had I applied for that I would either have ended up with no roof lights or everything in conservation style with the attached cost increase.
Set up some skittles and then let the conservation officer knock them over, don't go off crying to the bottom of the garden!
It is still expensive though, lime plastering particularly costs an arm and a leg more than drylining/gypsum but sometimes these things are necessary both for authenticity, correct working of the fabric (lime breathes) and for aesthetic reasons.
I couldn't believe how badly they handled it although I would concede that their CO (at least the woman) was a bit of a pigheaded battleaxe.
Fash
This is precisely the nonsense of it all. The two are the same profile and from the ground will be completely indistinguishable. One costs more both to install and to maintain. So what good purpose is served by making you have any CI?
publish a full spec for their digital caliper which I assume is warranted. And tend to keep things in stock at least at the main warehouse so offer the choice of mail order unlike Aldi etc which just do 'specials' for this sort of thing.
In these days of quick internet cost comparisons, there's little need to be concerned about price differentials anyway between firms - it's no longer a 'secret'.
I think there is an excellent case for lobbying for a "grade III" listing that says 'keep the original character, but if the original material is damaged beyond ECONOMIC repair, replace with something in the style or spirit of the original, and you may add bits on as long as they don't look totally at odds with the rest of it'
That would allow many houses with something of interest to have the house as a whole listed grade III but with e.g. a door, a staircase or a fireplace listed grade II..
It's quite possible (at least in Scotland) to have only certain features listed; I've lived in flats where only the glazed tiling in the common close was listed.
Owain
Agreed. Two problems with listing is that it is done without any process of consultation and it is all or nothing. I live in a C19 terrace with no original features internally, every house in the row was built and in some cases rebuilt to a different pattern in the century before last. Nor are any of the elevations without later modifications. If this house were to be rebuilt entirely, what would there be to preserve? A pile of poor quality reclaimed bricks and a fairly ordinary late Georgian doorcase, though I'm not sure how much of the doorcase would remain if two centuries of paint were removed.
With Conservation and listed buildings you either completely understand and agree with it, or consider it bureaucratic interference there is seldom a middle view. And if you question why plastic imitation cast iron rainwater fittings are inappropriate on a listed house we are worlds apart.
The lesson from last night [1] were a couple trying to make money from property developing with the wrong house in the wrong area at the wrong price, and spoiled quite a nice finish with some appalling details.
[1] In fact I did not see the program last night but I did see it first time around, and I do know the house and area as I live in e-sussex. I viewed the house when it was originally up for sale over 4years ago (Before being sold to that couple) and offered 300k which I considered to be the max price for that house all things considered. If I remember correctly that couple paid c500k for it, I don't know if they eventually managed to sell but I would be very very surprised if they managed to make any money from "working their socks off " with or without CO interference. -
Yes, but its easier bureaucratically to bang a listing on the whole house.
Which essentially means its uneconomic to repair, and is left to fall down instead.
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