Re: Grade II Listed Building

Yes, permission will be withheld to the point of being unreasonable.

Yes and you'll never get it.

If you like living your life with some small-minded nobody from the local council who failed all his 'O' levels, has the same concept of personal hygiene as a bag lady, and who has an axe to grind against people who can afford to buy listed buildings supervising everything you do and charging you sixty quid a pop for every planned alteration (90% of which will be rejected) then buy a listed building. Otherwise, run away.

Reply to
Steve Firth
Loading thread data ...

I can confirm everything that Peter has said. The process is entirely capricious and is based upon one aligning one's own taste with that of the LBO. We had the experience of working for three years with an LBO to agree changes to a listed building necessary to prevent the decay of the structure, to reverse some truly awful work done in the 1960s and to restore a dvidided Georgian room to its original proportions as well as providing modern bathrooms and a kitchen fit to cook in. We went into this properly with the assistance of the SPAB who agreed with what we wanted to achieve and an architect (not cheap) with a good repuation for workign on listed buildings. The LBO agreed (verbally) the entire set of drawings and when we went to the planning stage the entire set was rejected, a waste of over £6k in fees.

In the few weeks between the agreement and the planning committee meting the LBO had changed. We had a new LBO who saw it as their duty to block any application from us, to the point where they lied in public about the application and abused the planning process to ensure that we could not speak in our defence.

Eventually the LBO sketched a plan for what would be considered acceptable - a plan which satisfied none of the original objectives and which it was estimated would cost more to construct than the building is worth. We were given consent for this work, but now the Building Regs people tell us that it cannot be built safely. More money wasted.

Reply to
Steve Firth

Oh yes, been through that as well. In the middle of our struggle with the LBO BT arrived and told me they were going to fasten a galvanised metal eye to the wall of my house. I told them to push off and was served with a notive telling me that I had no right to refuse. I contacted the LBO who told me that BT could do what they liked to the house, no permission required. It took major negotiations to prevent them fixing the damn thing into a rubbed brick arch.

Bastards.

Reply to
Steve Firth

BT have been fairly responsible on this one. They used nails with a lead loop into the mortar to secure the phone lines.

I presume the CATV people also believe they are exempt or actually are?

Reply to
Ed Sirett

Or if they are like the contractors NTL used in Portsmouth, they simply don't give a damn.

Reply to
Steve Firth

The key is to go and have a chat with teh ***hole ^H^H^H^H LBO FIRST and see what is 'acceptable'

Plenty of grovelling, lots of sympathetic listening to how dreadful it is being abused by people who 'think they can walk all over listing guidelines in the name of Profit' etc. etc. plus turning up in the shoddiest car you can find, in stained clothes, and anything else that makes you look like one of Us, not one of Them, should get the ossifer in a more mellow frame of mind, and then the final trick is to get THEM to suggest what you had in mind already..

Very time consuming, and totally humilitating..but there ya go.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

If you read the bit you snipped, you will see that was exactly what we did. We involved the LBO *before* we bought the house and walked over the entire site with him describing what we wanted to do and providing sketches of before and after. We only bought when we were told that what we wanted to do was "appropriate" and "not a problem". Then we took a further three years after we bought the house refining the plans with an architect and the LBO to agree the changes. Then the entire lot was rejected on the advice of the LBO at a planning committee meeting at which we were prevented from presenting our case and the LBO presented a completely false and outrageus sketch of the impact of our changes.

Our carefully-prepared plans, elevations and sketches of the changes in context were never shown to the committee nor were any of the samples of building materials and mock-up windows and doors made by a craftsman to exactly duplicate the extant installations seen by the committee.

One committee member commented afterwards that "a significant injustice" had occurred.

Reply to
Steve Firth

That was what I concluded.

Reply to
Ed Sirett

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.