Listed building consent
Discussion
Hello guys, long time no post, a couple of fairly unpleasant and busy years have passed since I was properly here last, but life has turned around and we can start enjoying the fruits of our labour now.
We bought a nice little cottage, sadly (well it is and isn't one thing we loved was the period features) it's a grade 2 listed, which makes life harder for the renovation although thankfully we want to keep most of it as it should be anyway (read windows etc.) so no great battles there, we have a hideous 90's bathroom to remove which involves a stud wall coming out but again not anticipating a big fight with the council.
Where we do have a potential concern is the garage, it was obviously not originally built as a garage (not many cars around 1800ish) it's been built from 2 main walls with a third added later from bits and then a wooden front and a horrible tin roof all added at different times, as you can imagine it's ugly, doesn't function too well and has little historical value, of more of a sticking point are the outhouses built either side of it (and attached) which are older and do have some value, I won't bore you with our plans but does anyone have any guidance to dealing with the council who are coming Friday for a preliminary site meeting?
The chap who's coming out sounds a nice guy but of course has a job to do, we don't want to build a super modern building or anything, it will be in keeping with and keep most of what's already there just make it more functional and safe, I'm assuming he will be looking at impact to neighbours, impact to historical value and general keeping the character as much as anything else?
Anyone else been through this?
We bought a nice little cottage, sadly (well it is and isn't one thing we loved was the period features) it's a grade 2 listed, which makes life harder for the renovation although thankfully we want to keep most of it as it should be anyway (read windows etc.) so no great battles there, we have a hideous 90's bathroom to remove which involves a stud wall coming out but again not anticipating a big fight with the council.
Where we do have a potential concern is the garage, it was obviously not originally built as a garage (not many cars around 1800ish) it's been built from 2 main walls with a third added later from bits and then a wooden front and a horrible tin roof all added at different times, as you can imagine it's ugly, doesn't function too well and has little historical value, of more of a sticking point are the outhouses built either side of it (and attached) which are older and do have some value, I won't bore you with our plans but does anyone have any guidance to dealing with the council who are coming Friday for a preliminary site meeting?
The chap who's coming out sounds a nice guy but of course has a job to do, we don't want to build a super modern building or anything, it will be in keeping with and keep most of what's already there just make it more functional and safe, I'm assuming he will be looking at impact to neighbours, impact to historical value and general keeping the character as much as anything else?
Anyone else been through this?
Yes luckily it is the consent chap not a general bod from the council, he sounds pretty sensible on the phone, we discussed a fairly extreme job and he didn't recoil in horror so hopefully we can work together, thankfully most of the work we are fairly flexible on, we have a couple of goals and there are multiple ways to achieve them (one major goal is at present the neighbour has access across our garden, we want to move a pack of out buildings allowing the neighbour to access through their own gate and not through our garden, but there are multiple ways of providing that access as the footprint of buildings is big enough to absorb multiple options).
We have a family member who will be doing all our plans so that's a big saving cost wise, but also helps as they do property development as well as being an architect so once we have guidelines we can work with them to get what we actually want.
I suspect when the chap comes round some bits will have been done without permission including potentially the god awful bathroom, on the positive side next door did a full remodel including knocking walls out and got retrospective permission when they came to sell, which suggests they as a department are sensible and generally we want to get back to how the house should look obviously. I'm just hoping I can come out of it with my double garage still!
We have a family member who will be doing all our plans so that's a big saving cost wise, but also helps as they do property development as well as being an architect so once we have guidelines we can work with them to get what we actually want.
I suspect when the chap comes round some bits will have been done without permission including potentially the god awful bathroom, on the positive side next door did a full remodel including knocking walls out and got retrospective permission when they came to sell, which suggests they as a department are sensible and generally we want to get back to how the house should look obviously. I'm just hoping I can come out of it with my double garage still!
Thanks gents, fingers crossed for Friday.
Re. The fireplace comment, sadly they are long gone, I like victorian fireplaces but both had been ripped out and replaced with nasty cheap gas fires (well one was it's a B+Q special, the other is the front to a baxi back boiler which I want to replace). But the house does have some lovely features including some unusual windows, a curved wall (that is going to be a bugger to build a kitchen around) and an original copper in the kitchen.
Re. The fireplace comment, sadly they are long gone, I like victorian fireplaces but both had been ripped out and replaced with nasty cheap gas fires (well one was it's a B+Q special, the other is the front to a baxi back boiler which I want to replace). But the house does have some lovely features including some unusual windows, a curved wall (that is going to be a bugger to build a kitchen around) and an original copper in the kitchen.
Sorry for the tardy response.
We had the site meeting and it was very positive, everything we wanted to do was approved and was an awful lot easier than I'd worried it might be! That said we were wanting to be sensible about the work we wanted to do so hopefully all the paperwork goes through now and the jobs done........ Then the expense starts!
We had the site meeting and it was very positive, everything we wanted to do was approved and was an awful lot easier than I'd worried it might be! That said we were wanting to be sensible about the work we wanted to do so hopefully all the paperwork goes through now and the jobs done........ Then the expense starts!
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