Grade II listed building, yay or nay?

[CarGirl]

How limited are you on what you can do?

Internally??

Do all windows have to stay the same etc.

Easy to follow general guidelines anywhere?

You have to get listed buildings consent before you do things like windows, it can be very annoying to have what you do to your house dictated to by other people.

Still, if I liked the house I would do it, but my taste would generally agree with the conservation officer anyway.

rules for listed buildings

Sounds interesting, I love old buildings. They are my passion.

I have just found out that bits of my house were made in the 14th century. It isn't listed though.

Okay so internal stuff seems to be okay. It's an odd layout downstairs and dark but perhaps by knocking through on some internal walls would solve that problem.......

Mmmm.

Might be tricky. Depends on how old the wall is and if it will fundamentally alter the layout of the house.

The thing is, you can talk to them before hand but they won't put anything in writing until you have formally applied. So you could buy it and then find that you can't carry out the work you want.

(by the way, DD is still sleeping better - do you remember giving me your excellent advice?)

Can't knock through original walls without premission.

"permission"

Humprhey your name is familiar, no idea about what advice I gave though

You sent my DD to a cranial osteopath. It saved me from a nervous breakdown, I was so so so desperate. The CO had such a dramatic effect on her, I went from not being able to put her down AT ALL, to her sleeping in her own cot for hours at a stretch.

Actually I might have been called something else then

I am still very grateful though.

Yes I do remember now I am so pleased that it made such a huge difference, my friends son was like that - I was a nervous wreck after one afternoon!

No, internal walls aren't ok! We lived in a listed building and did internal works thinking was ok. When we went to sell it, it was discovered by the buyer's solicitors that we should have had Listed Building permission. Cue near nervous breakdown from me. Someone from the local council came round and after much teeth sucking etc decided they wouldn't actually prosecute us, but buyers pulled out. We thought we were going to be left with an unsaleable house.

However, did sell it to someone else who couldn't care less (we were honest about it all, they just shrugged and more or less said 'so what') who then sold it on at huge profit (height of property boom) who I know did all kinds of things inside to it.

Depends how honest you are in the long run. I never want to go through that again!!!

Mine was listed a year after I bought it. It was a 17th century fishing cottage beautiful window and very rare.

Inside it was a horrid mixture of 60s/70s horror with an extension, flat roof etc etc. All suddenly listed!

When I sold several years ago we had a million problems which took a huge amount of time to sort out. I had to provide photographic evidence and jump through several legal hoops, smiling very, very nicely at the listed man A LOT.

You don't have to pay for listed planning applications though which is good.

Listed buildings are taken very seriously by the council, don't think you can take a sledgehammer to any of it before consulting with the listing dept and get some nice biscuits in.

Listed buildings are, on the whole, lovely but you do need to know that the penalties for unauthorised works can be BIG. It is a criminal offence to carry out unauthorised works and can result in a £20,000 fine and/or 6 months imprisonment in the most extreme case. Works that can require LB consent include internal and external alterations.

On the plus side your local Council's Conservation Officer will be likely to be able to discuss any plans you have and offer advice.

You probably need to look upon buying a listed building as you being a curator for the time that you own it but it has most likely been around for a lot longer than any of us and will continue to be around after we've all gone.

Sorry if I sound like the voice of doom, Listed buildings are fantastic and unique but they aren't normally cheap to maintain and you might not be able to do all the things that you might like to to the property. If you go into it with your eyes open and understand the restrictions, it'll be a lot easier in the long run.

Nay.

We lived in two of them and they were money pits and PITAs (thankfully we were reading).

a building is on the list, any building work will require 'listed building consent', according to the Planning Act 1990. This is obtained through the local planning authority. Even minor works, such as painting or simple repair work in some circumstances, falls under the scope of this act. read it more carfeully

Also really depends on the conservation officer, some are really jobswroth people and can get a bit power hungry.

Grade II listed is less restrictive than Grade I listed but the bottom line is that you cannot do anything significant structurally or change anything internally that is part of the listing particulars.

I live in a Grade II listed house (rented) and it is a very expensive occupation for my landlord to maintain it.

Everyone always underestimates just how expensive they are to maintain. I live in an area with a lot of Grade II listed houses and most are occupied by older people who have let them fall into quite serious disrepair. People still come from outside the area, fall in love with them and always overpay.

You need to talk to your local council Conservation Officer to find out what is permitted. Their attitudes varyand they doget power mad as FiveGoMadInDorset says. Planning permission is always required before anything but very minor repairs are undertaken.

I shall pass this info on to them, thanks

All structural works need listed building consent but you can chat through options with officers beforehand and see what they reckon.

The main thing to watch out for is that a lot of the tradesmen etc are more expensive because repairs etc have to be done historically accurately. E.g our neighbours have a G2 listed house with a stone roof. It costs an absolute fortune to repair and replace parts of a stone roof and will usually have to be done by specialist contractors.

We are about to buy a listed (grade 2) property and have already been in discussions with man from council about what would and would not be permitted. It's not always what we might think - he insists we keep the sconces in the living room, but he's happy for us to extend the original garage and convert it to a kitchen (well, off the record at least - we still need to go through planning if we go ahead...)

First of all, like everyone is saying, there's a common misconception that only the outside is listed. The inside and the surroundings are also listed, and need Listed Buildings Consent for changes.

My sister is a planning officer dealing with listed buildings, and her advice would be that you should never buy a listed building unless you are happy to live in it as it is. The issue is that you can't tell in advance what you can and can't change, because each individual house is different. It will depend on the history and architecture of the indivdual house. For example, I had our conservation officer round, and we chatted about removing the ceiling in one room. Her first response was 'no, you can't remove the ceiling, as this room would always have had a ceiling', to which I was able to say 'no, the ceiling was only put in 20 years ago before which it was an open vault' and waved the evidence in front of her, and she then said 'fine, remove the ceiling'. If I hadn't had the evidence, then I wouldn't have been able to remove the ceiling.

If you want to buy a listed building, I'd go on the SPAB Homeowners' course, which teaches you what to look for, how to maintain the house, and can save you a lot of money very quickly. If you have enough basic knowledge you can spot which tradesmen are talking bollocks and can avoid hiring them!

They are also absolute moneypits. I think you do realistically need either to be very handy with DIY yourself and willing to learn new skills and to spend your weekends on it, or you have to have a lot of money. We're budgeting on spending about £80,000 to get our house to a reasonable but not luxurious standard, with me doing quite a bit of simple labour myself.

Having said that, I have a listed house, my sister has a listed house, and we love them! But I never realised how much effort they took to look after, and how much of my time is spent on renovations and ongoing repairs.

If you have a survey, have a survey done by a historic buildings specialist - this is very important, as otherwise they may have no idea about what they're looking for.

I have a listed house and love it but, like Grendelsmum said, we were not planning major internal work to it. We do want to put a a small fence on the outside (long story involving drunken arseholes from the local pub), and had to find photographic evidence that there had been a fence there in the past. Your local library is your friend as they will have the photographs and so on you need. The bloke at ours is a gem - he loves trying to find stuff out for you, says its like detective work!

Repairs are expensive - our council has a list of people who have done listed work before which has been approved by them, so we tend to pick workmen from there.

Get the conservation people on side - we have always discussed things with them first and haven't had any big issues with them. They feel we are sympathetic to their side of things and it does help that our local officer tries very hard to match the needs of conservation to the needs of modern family life.

One other thing - we also have trees with TPOs in the garden. It's not a biggy, just that we cannot cut them down (not that we'd want to!) without permission and it's also best to notify the tree people before even pruning or safety works take place. A good tree surgeon can take care of all this for you, but it's more expense.

We love our house - just wish the pillocks who owned it before us hadn't lost all the old deeds

Just going to agree with everything Poledra says - always talk to the CO first, and the local library and archives office are your friends! I have the names of the owners and inhabitants of the house back to 1800 (sadly am stuck there and can't get earlier), and descriptions, maps and plans back to 1854.

Just to give you an idea of the bizarre costs that can come up with an old house - we spent £750 on a door. One door. It does look absolutely gorgeous, though!

Just to add to what Poledra said - we used to live in a Grade II listed house, and it was not just the house that was listed but the garden walls and outbuildings etc, plus TPO on the tree in our garden - when the tree caused the garden wall to collapse we had to get the conservation officer in to agree a solution re rebuilding and accommodating the tree at the same time.

Our conservation officer was also very helpful in providing a list of builders who were used to working on listed buildings

I have a listed house and as well as the permission aspects my house insurnace is astronomical as you have to insure it to be rebuilt the way it is if it burns down. Mine is £1500 a year!! The rebuilding cost is more than the house value atm. It is expensive to work on, you have to get permission for everything, so dont do it unless you are really enthusistic. I love me house but would think hard about buying another listed building. Mine needs new windows - shudder