The New Testament

I wonder whether you’ve been involved with a listed building, or had dealings with a house in a Conservation Area. Many of you will have done. There are over 10,000 Conservation Areas dotted around the country, and nearly 500,000 listed buildings. That’s a phenomenal number — it means that almost one in 30 UK homes has an extra layer of control, over and above normal planning permission.

And it’s not just homes — building plots can be listed too. If you create a plot from the garden of a listed building then any plans for a new house will have to tickle the fancy of the conservation officer, as well as the local planning committee. And unlike the local planning committee, conservation officers are unelected and their word is sacrosanct. If you want to make changes or just simply repairs to a listed building, you more or less have to do whatever the relevant official says — however expensive or unreasonable this may appear to be.

How did this all come to pass? The idea of protecting buildings from their owners started in the 1930s, when lots of aristos were having trouble keeping their family piles up to par. Added to this, death duties, which often made it impossible to pass down the estate from the 16th to the 17th Earl, meant that rather than give everything to the National Trust, some of the more unscrupulous owners simply knocked their houses down. There was a national outcry to protect these venerable buildings from such acts of financial vandalism.

But what started as a way of protecting ancient monuments has slowly grown to become an enormous edifice in its own right. Listing is split into three grades and the lowest designation usually applies to just about any building of vernacular interest, such as thatched cottages. Most pre- Victorian structures are now listed and an increasing number of modern buildings are also getting the treatment.

In England, the whole process is overseen by English Heritage (similar bodies exist for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) — an enormous quango with a budget of £180,000,000 per annum and a payroll of 2,000. Visit its website and you may easily mistake it for the National Trust. But, whereas the National Trust is a charity, pure and simple, English Heritage is an arm of the Government and if you disobey its listed building procedures you could end up in court and be ordered to pay a fine, or even face a prison sentence.

So whilst we can all see the value of preserving our heritage, many owners of older properties are both resentful and suspicious of this unaccountable, unelected body which has, in effect, become the architectural heritage police. And whilst English Heritage has undoubtedly accumulated a lot of expertise over the years, its judgements are, however, sometimes questionable.

In March, English Heritage hit the headlines over this very issue. It was accused of abusing its position, recommending products from manufacturers who also happen to be sponsors. To be fair, it’s a charge it vehemently denies — it says it has a series of systems in place which effectively separate the fundraising side of the enterprise from its conservation directives. However, the bad publicity adds to a groundswell of discontent that’s already well established. English Heritage might present itself as a friendly, benign organisation, battling to preserve what is best in this country’s architectural heritage, but a lot of indignant listed building owners would beg to differ.

There has never really been a debate about which homes should and should not be preserved, and who should be responsible. It’s just assumed that conservation is a good thing and that the more we conserve, the better. However, the heavy hand of the state is being rolled out ever wider to enforce conservation — the costs of which (including those to homeowners) are often astronomical. Furthermore, there are now tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of listed houses which the public has no access to and, in many cases, are not even visible from the public highway. Who exactly, if anyone, are these buildings being preserved for?