DCMS Listed Buildings consultation - 23rd Aug deadline

[Man from Porlock]

This consultation by the Dept of Culture, Media and Sport may be of interest: Consultation on Improvements to the system of Listed Building Consents http://www.culture.gov.uk/consultations/9236.aspx. Closing date for responses is 23rd of August.

[BAJR]

Thanks for the heads up.

WHat is your take on it.?

[Man from Porlock]

I think that there are probable potential improvements amongst the options, and I'm less antagonistic to the consultation than some I have spoken to. I agree with them that it's a short consultation period at a time of holiday/international sporting events distractions.

Provided that local planning authorities continue to have appropriately experienced staff to review and decide applications, an arrangement whereby applicants provide detailed expert reports which consider the implications and recommend consent or refusal is close to the NPPF process.

The system of accreditation for those expert report writers could be a stumbling block (at least for those with professional objections to joining the suggested accedited bodies).

I'm opposed to the suggestion that the local authority could delegate the grant of Listed Building Consent to accredited agents - it's important that the elected authority members continue to hold a responsibility for the decisions taken.

[Unitof1]

Open date:26 July 2012
Closing date:23 August 2012

Lets have the consultation in the hoilday period trick. I bet most "owners" of listed buildings are on holiday and most of the pension grabbers employed by it are as well. Some joke. I bet it gets extended, all they are going to get is lots of moans saying that they could not get a corporate opinion out. Cant imagine eh getting one together.

For my tupence the only way to make the listed building system better is to drop listing and unlist all the ones which people live in but this brillent idea will take another few years to gain hold and the chances are most of the building will fall to pieces by then. Good ridence.

Whats wrong with this whole tory penfold reform is that they think that they are going to get some "growth" out of planning reform and by pretending that the bust will be over. Rather than we in the era of stagnation and its going to be long, so long that the japanese still cant tell you how long a stagnation is likely to be. I see no reason that it wont be in the more than twenty year period. What that means is that property prices could drop another 30%+ and there will still not be any takers/developers but the bankers and the politians cant imagine letting that happen and so the compromise will be 20 years+ of stagnation in which we basically have to wait for several million OAPs to die. You know the ones, the ones currently rattling around in their listed buildings (or would be if they werent off on a saga holiday) which they wont be able to afford to heat this winter let alone maintain. Conservation areas will come to be seen as the getto and the solution will be slum clearence and mercy demolitions.

The planners basicaly need to transfer conservation officers to social services and get them trained up in bottom cleaning and then the planners follow them. About two weeks of that this winter and they will be clammering for double glazing to be allowed, ohhhhh the slippery slope

[Sith]

...transfer conservation officers to social services and get them trained up in bottom cleaning and then the planners follow them.

Based on recent experience, there are planners out there who couldn't find their own bottom with both hands and a map.

On a more serious note, there is some sense in Unit's post. There seems to be a genuine belief in Government that the answer to economic stagnation is to deregulate planning to let developers 'create wealth'. In reality I can't see how this can possibly help. As long as world finances are in turmoil, banks aren't lending, growing numbers of people are out of work, and those with jobs are paid less; no one can afford to buy the houses they are building.

And regardless of the rhetoric, developers are not building 'affordable' houses, but property they can sell at the (still massively inflated) local market rate. We may all be in this together but the developers are very much in this for themselves.

[Wax]

Based on recent experience, there are planners out there who couldn't find their own bottom with both hands and a map.

On a more serious note, there is some sense in Unit's post. There seems to be a genuine belief in Government that the answer to economic stagnation is to deregulate planning to let developers 'create wealth'. In reality I can't see how this can possibly help. As long as world finances are in turmoil, banks aren't lending, growing numbers of people are out of work, and those with jobs are paid less; no one can afford to buy the houses they are building.

And regardless of the rhetoric, developers are not building 'affordable' houses, but property they can sell at the (still massively inflated) local market rate. We may all be in this together but the developers are very much in this for themselves.

Can developers really sell property at a profit the moment unless the building schemes are subsidisied by Government? I like Sith think this Government has decided that development is the only way out of the recession and blindly ploughs on cutting essential services (archaeology included) making people redundant. They then seem really surprised when people who are unemployed or have insecure jobs dont want to buy anything. The only answer they seem able to formulate is more houses = better economy. God help Heritage and archaeology in this mess especially when local Government decides that actually planners can easily advise on archaeoology ( who needs expensive experts).

[Unitof1]

I can see how deregulation works and I think that includes deregulation of building regulation because it would allow rampant innovation. Unfortunately a lot of this innovation would be dangerous and probably offensive and would fail, but it would judged and undertaken by the individual and if you consider listed buildings within the individual's interpretation and value of "heritage" rather than the great unknowable public service double speak.

When looking at a listed residential building I am always confused as to what has been listed. Is it the brick, the combination of bricks, the combination of bricks which might have come from a particular period and or is it who lived in it but now it's somehow become that anybody who lives in the place wants to live in a museum. It does seem that they want Eh to more precisely define what the listing is for. Ha ha impossible but if they can get it to be a stutory function we are talking major jobs wort possibly thousands of jobs

[barkingdigger]

The infinite number of monkeys have been busy, but this ain't exactly a script for Hamlet... (I do wish Mssrs Breakitup & Flogitoff would stop developing policy by the "Open mouth, insert foot" method!)

Since the main driver is reducing the Gov't bill for heritage services, I can't see any of the four options being policed by a cadre of well-informed LPA officers. Instead, one of the options calls for a wild west where the developer hires his own heritage officer to push through a positive recommendation - can you say "conflict of interest"? If the whole point of the LBC system is to conserve LBs against the forces of short-term convenience-led alteration, there needs to be a strong conservative (lower-case "c") set of judges making sure we don't lose historic fabric, which means providing adequate funding from central Gov't to the LPAs so staff levels can be maintained. The four "options" given can only cost jobs in the heritage sector by reducing the number of developments that get affected by LBC, not only from suddenly-redundant "pension grabbers" but also from hard-workin' Units o' One who find the developers no longer need them to clear up those pesky Conditions if they can get the development slipped past the system without any scrutiny! The only winners are the owners...

[Unitof1]

i dont want their work, it anit archaeology. They can pull down a whole street of listed goeorgen bulindings but the bricks still end up somewhere where I can say these came from a street of listed buildings....

[Sith]

He's making my head hurt again. If anyone is wondering what a deregulated system of protection for historic buildings would look like, try reading this.