Building control

[Flyfisher]

You have basically said that regulation is pointless. I think it is a fallacious argument.

Not really. I've basically said BAD regulation is pointless. Good regulation requires a bit of give and take on both sides.

We've recently lost the VAT advantages that went with LBC and many councils (if this forum is representative) make it difficult to contact and work with COs, so it's increasingly looking like take, take, take with little given back to the owners who are the ones actually financing all this care of our precious built heritage.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Bogart is essentially correct. The listing descriptions are not detailed enough to prevent lots of unapproved alterations going unnoticed and even when someone suspects an alteration has been made proving it absolutely would not always be easy, and without near-certainty how many local authorities would risk starting legal proceedings?

More than you'd think. Here's a selection from the database as at January last year
http://ihbconline.co.uk/prosecutions/#1

All quite significant alterations though, whereas I assumed Bogart was talking about the odd wall or similar. Plus, some of the fines & costs could be seen as fairly reasonable by owners with very deep pockets, especially if their overall works were quite major anyway.

I'm most certainly NOT advocating ignoring the LBC process but I stand by my point that its better to actively support listed building owners than to simply threaten them. We've all read too many tales of frustration on here about owners not being able to contact their CO, some councils not even employing COs, owners having to pay to meet with COs and COs being, shall we say, less than helpful - all of which creates an adversarial relationship between the respective parties instead of a cooperative one. And it's always the buildings that will ultimately suffer the most.

All Gareth has done is recognised that an owner of a listed building has carried out illegal works without consent, and that the new owner will need to put that right, costing them some expenditure. The market value of the property will have to take into account the cost of repair. Either that or the present owner can put things right and then expect a higher price. This is the system working as it should. Without such action the listed building system would be irrelevant. All you have said is that if conservation officers carry out enforcement orders then unscrupulous people will break the law in more extreme ways. I agree, they might, and if they do they should be penalised even more heavily. Or we could scrap regulation all together and have anarchy. If you want to see what that looks like, then come and visit beautiful Birmingham where no planning laws seem to be enforced.

 

[Flyfisher]

So the system isn't working then, in Birmingham at least. Perhaps Birmingham is one of those areas where the COs are difficult to access and so frustrated owners do their own thing?

Of course there will always be unscrupulous owners/builders/developers, but we started this discussion with Bogart suggesting that minor works would likely never be noticed. However, when they are noticed perhaps another approach wold be to judge them on their merit and consider issuing retrospective LBC instead of just getting out the big stick and having 'fun' ruining a sale? As I said, a bit of give and take. It wouldn't always work and would not always be appropriate, but it might in many circumstances.

 

[plasticpigeon]

In Birmingham the system is broken because people do what they want with total impunity as the council never enforce anthing, even for massive flouting of normal planning, no dount due to fear of litigation. Whether a conservation officer is easy to access or not is not really the issue. Do you think it is ok to go drink driving because you never see any police pulling people over in your area? It is basically a hole due to lack of regulation, and definitely not due to over zealous regulation encouraging home owners to chance their arm, unless of course all regulation is too much regulation, in which case welcome to the wild west.

As far as Gareths case is concerned, you have ventured into conjecture land. Nobody likes a jobsworth, and I'm pretty confident that if the works on the house that Gareth is talking about were reinstating lost features in an appropriate way, for example reinstating a historically correct window in place of a more modern one inserted before the building was listed, then he wouldn't be making a fuss but would probably be asking for retrospective consent. However you have no idea what the issue was so I can't see how you can criticise a conservation officer for simply doing their job.

 

[Flyfisher]

As far as Gareths case is concerned, you have ventured into conjecture land. Nobody likes a jobsworth, and I'm pretty confident that if . . . were . . . then . . . would probably . . .

Seems we've both ventured in to conjecture land together. :wink:

 

[plasticpigeon]

Does that make your point any more valid? :wink:

 

[Flyfisher]

Does that make your point any more valid? :wink:

As valid as yours I suppose :wink:

These things are rarely binary and I suspect there are cases out there that would support both our views. Who knows how the numbers stack up, but meanwhile we can be sure that some owners are having problems with their COs while trying to do the right thing and some just give up and make changes anyway. In most cases it's the building that suffers in the end.

 

[Bogart]

Has anyone on this forum ever had somebody, of authority, come around and say " hey this does not look like it did when it was listed"?

I haven't, but only this week I was the one, in authority, saying it. Ruined a house sale. Fun. :twisted:

Though frequently there's little or no record, sometimes there is. I'd advise against assuming that "removing a wall adding a wall etc nobody will have a clue."

l would be intrigued as to how it came to your notice.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

So the system isn't working then, in Birmingham at least. Perhaps Birmingham is one of those areas where the COs are difficult to access and so frustrated owners do their own thing?

Of course there will always be unscrupulous owners/builders/developers, but we started this discussion with Bogart suggesting that minor works would likely never be noticed. However, when they are noticed perhaps another approach wold be to judge them on their merit and consider issuing retrospective LBC instead of just getting out the big stick and having 'fun' ruining a sale? As I said, a bit of give and take. It wouldn't always work and would not always be appropriate, but it might in many circumstances.

If brown plastic casement windows in place of painted timber horizontal sashes had the slightest chance of being acceptable, then perhaps. Ditto removing C18 plaster to expose brick chimney breasts and beams.
But no point inviting a retrospective application for either.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Has anyone on this forum ever had somebody, of authority, come around and say " hey this does not look like it did when it was listed"?

I haven't, but only this week I was the one, in authority, saying it. Ruined a house sale. Fun. :twisted:

Though frequently there's little or no record, sometimes there is. I'd advise against assuming that "removing a wall adding a wall etc nobody will have a clue."

l would be intrigued as to how it came to your notice.

One breach clearly visible from the street, another evident from the estate agent's photos.

 

[Flyfisher]

If brown plastic casement windows in place of painted timber horizontal sashes had the slightest chance of being acceptable, then perhaps. Ditto removing C18 plaster to expose brick chimney breasts and beams.
But no point inviting a retrospective application for either.

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Ah, plastic windows, always a bit of a giveaway. I'd like to think that any prospective buyer of a listed property would highlight such a thing themselves, but who knows? Anyway, fair point about retrospective LBC. It would be interesting to understand the thought processes of the owners who thought plastic windows would be acceptable in a listed building. I wonder if it was a wilful flouting of the rules or genuine ignorance of them. Wilful flouting seems odd if the intention was to sell the property, or perhaps it was just simple stupidity. There's nowt as strange as folk. :?

As for the plaster removal, that could be an example of an alteration that could be very difficult to prosecute. Fortunately in this case photos were available but if not then how could it be proved when the plaster was removed?

It's slightly ironic that estate agent particulars probably give a better description of listed building interiors than the official listing documents and are fast becoming a valuable resource for period property protection, especially since many are so readily accessible on-line these days.

So what happens next? Will the owner(s) be served with some form of 'restoration order' or do they have to be prosecuted first?

 

[88v8]

Brown plastic? Brown plastic?? In some areas, they should get an award for good taste.

The conservation joiner we have been using was on a large job last year, making forty windows to replace the plastic someone had put into a listed building.

I coma back to the point I have made before, that new owners of a listed building should get a flyer from the CO, outlining what they can and can't do. And whenever a house is sold, there should be an automatic CO inspection as part of the Search process. That would knock most unauthorised alterations on the head.

Then, as a nod towards the added grief of owning a listed building, there should be a discount on the council tax.

Hang on, this was supposed to be about Building Control.....

Ivor