Grade 2 listed - what’s allowed?

the listed building thing is ajoke, i had a cottage in a small devon village, was listed and the thatch needed a new ridge, i mistakenly asked the council first, and they stated that i needed a certain type of reed for the thatch, had it done at huge expense, It looked different to all the other houses in the village, and asked some owners, they had all used a different reed as 1/4 the price. it didnt even match the rest of the roof, and looked odd 10 years later when i sold it, will never have a listed house again.
So i did the right thing according to them and made my house stand out from the others, madness.
Was 20 years ago and still grates

You very often need a Heritage Assessment to support any Planning or LBC application anyway. These are currently commissioned, at the applicant's expense, from qualified Heritage Consultants, but are then filed away by the local authority against the individual application, and forgotten.

You could make it a requirement that for any application (or when the property is bought by a new owner) where one has not been produced previously, that a HA is commissioned via English Heritage (who could subcontract the work to the same qualified consultants who do them already, but it would allow them to impose a more standardised format, and ensure that they are impartial) and filed against the Listing for the building. You'd only need to do them once, for each building, instead of for each and every application, as happens at present.

Normal PD rights could be applied to any aspect of the building not specifically protected by the enhanced Listing, and the Heritage Assessment could be given the same status as Supplementary Planning Guidance as a (strong) material consideration on any application to alter a 'protected' element.

Put Conservation Areas Statements similarly in the hands of English Heritage on a statutory basis, and you can then humanely euthanise all the LPA Conservation Officers, at a saving of £50K per head, per annum.

Alternately, as I suggested above, get rid of statutory protection on all the old tat that is currently Locally or Grade II listed, retaining only Grade II* and Grade I, get rid of the Conservation Officers at the same time, and you can use the cost saving to fund English Heritage to prepare the Statutory Enhanced Listings, at no cost to building owners.

It's also possibly worth mentioning that survey technology has come along massively in the last few years. It's now perfectly practicable (and relatively cheap) to produce a full colour, high-resolution 3D scan of a building that could similarly be held against the Listing. Obviously, privacy issues would need to be overcome (perhaps give the option to limit access to English Heritage and LPA Officers), but apart from showing all the furnishings, it's not really much more intrusive than placing plans and elevations in the public domain, which happens on Planning applications already.

Very much in agreement with this. Do the inventory once and it becomes part of a pack that is transferred on change of ownership… but it is far too sensible an idea for o be taken up by the various busy bodies

Have you ever thought about becoming a Conservation Officer?

With that level of technical knowledge, you'd ace it.

Thanks for the advice. It’s in a village, under Tunbridge Wells Council.
I’ve liaised with the owner of the property & she’s going to contact the Conservation Officer.
She’s told me the stair case is ‘of importance’.
I’ve made it clear that I’m not carrying out any work until it’s been accepted by the CO.

Conservation officers?

I recently had a 2.5 year 'battle' with our CO. Not sure quite how I could have handled it better as I was open and honest through the entire process, with little coming back from planning. Eventually, I went to appeal and won. Sometimes common sense and pragmatism just does not work, especially when dealing with entrenched positions.

Our house was built in 1848 and is in a conservation area but not listed. We wanted to replace our 1980s double glazed rotten windows with some double glazed sash windows which matched the surrounding properties and were noted as a feature of the conservation area.

But the 1980s windows had a bespoke design, which the conservation officer wanted us to replicate. This proved prohibitively expensive as no one did anything that would match except for about £3.5k per window. (6 windows needed). So, two planning applications were refused. Eventually a successful appeal broke the deadlock.

I have a certain disdain for planning as a result.