Window sill height

[DJH]

Mike...BTW????? :shock: :shock:

Doug

 

[malcolm]

Thanks for that clarification. So presumably a 'secondary means of escape' could simply be a door to another room?

No, to the outside.

Doors to other rooms which have means of escape to outside work too, so long as you can get to the other room without using the corridor which is up in flames at the time. All they want is a second means of escape should the obvious route be on fire.

 

[MikeG]

Mike...BTW????? :shock: :shock:

Doug

Sorry..........By the way.........

 

[DJH]

No problem...I really should find something else to be doing!!!

 

[Flyfisher]

.......One beautiful Georgian house had had a single-skinned, corrugated roofed single storey shed added to it prior to listing. This eyesore of an extension was therefore part of the listing and the owner fought for years to be able to pull it down.

At the moment, if they listed my cottage, or included it in the conservation area, I would be either stuck with the horrors perpetrated on it in 1981 or have a long fight to undo the damage.

I don't know why this is such a generally held view. I am doing changes to Listed Buildings all the time, and the process is very straightforward. I suggest that people always employ an architect (with a background in conservation work) ...........well I would, wouldn't I?!.........because they'll design the right extension and alterations and get it through without any great hassle 9 times out of 10. I've never know of "years of a fight", nor have I known anyone stuck with an unwanted modern extension to a Listed Building.

The whole listing thing does seem to have a poor reputation, though I've come to think it's largely undeserved and mostly uninformed. I reckon it's partly a symptom of the 'Englishman's home is his castle' thing and the consequent natural aversion to anyone else having any authority over what you can and cannot do with your own home. I'd say the planning permission process has a similarly poor reputation for non-listed home owners, for much the same reasons.

I'll confess to having had concerns about taking on a listed property in need to significant works and worrying about the listing implications(who wouldn't as a first-timer?). Fortunately this forum was a wealth of reassuring information but the most fortunate thing was having a readily accessible CO with whom we could discuss our broad plans and intentions for the property before committing. I think we had three on site meeting with our CO even before committing and I've lost count of subsequent meetings during which we refined the detailed plans for each LBC submission. Consequently, each submission was pretty much a 'rubber stamping' exercise because everything had already been planned, discussed and agreed. As I've mentioned before, not all of our plans were agreed by the CO but in each case he was able to propose an alternative solution which was just as good, if not better, that our original plan, including things we would never have thought of as being possible. The whole process worked really well and it was like having an expert consultant on tap (and without the fees!). Even when we had a slight 'hiccup' with English Heritage about one proposal (we're G2* so EH is always informed), our CO helped to fight our corner and we gained consent with only the smallest of modifications to the original proposal.

So yes, I can understand people's concerns about these processes - and I have many friends who hate the idea of listing 'red tape' and feel quite sorry for us - but my own experience over almost ten years and three LBC submissions has been 99% positive. I suppose we could simply be very lucky to have such an accessible CO (which seems to be a frequent issue discussed here) or perhaps it's because our plans were basically sympathetic in the first place, but whatever the reasons I would now always recommend contacting the relevant CO as soon as possible and preferably well before detailed plans are emotionally set in stone - go for a 'what we're trying to achieve . . . ' consultative approach rather than 'we insist on doing this, this and this . . . '. So many things in life boil down to personal relationships and my experience is that constructive ones are usually more productive, and far more satisfying, than combative ones. Like it or not, 'the system' exists but we have a choice whether to use it to our advantage or fight against it.

 

[Flyfisher]

Thanks for that clarification. So presumably a 'secondary means of escape' could simply be a door to another room?

No, to the outside.

Doors to other rooms which have means of escape to outside work too, so long as you can get to the other room without using the corridor which is up in flames at the time. All they want is a second means of escape should the obvious route be on fire.

That was sort of my thinking. We have many (habitable) rooms that connect to other rooms without corridors. We're also fortunate to have more than one staircase and more than two external doors, so there are very few places in the house where anyone could be trapped by a single source of fire and be forced to resort to a window as a means of escape.