The planning people are there to protect the character of the area. The listed building people are meant to protect the building itself. Neither of these groups should be helping rich people vandalise historic buildings by adding giant extensions onto them.
You can apply for planning permission on a property you don’t own, evidently they chose not to do that. They just assumed they would get their way.
I’m at a loss for words.
but i’m guessing you didn’t bother to read my post. At least you’re consistently harsh.
So you’re saying that in the UK before you buy a property, you ask the owners to let you go into every room, take measurements, have and full architectural drawings done and you can submit them to the planner, the owners will wait while you go through a go through a multi-year planning process, hoping you get permission??? 
It would have never crossed my mind to do that.
In this episode the planner was actually great. He met with them on camera and said he could not approve a historically accurate extension and then went through a bunch of clear changes and suggestions they’d need to do to get his approval. They did them all and he approved gladly, then the big shock was the council voting NO (in a public on-camera session) with the reason that they’d never approve a historically inaccurate extension. The look on their faces was incredulous. It was very good TV.
@ Banksiaman
I’m sure you’re right, but I was thinking that since these were British, they didn’t do the same manipulative fakery the US reality shows do.
Sounded intriguing, but Escape to the Country isn’t on Netflix any more, so far as I can tell.
You ask the relevant authorities, before committing yourself, what their general policies are, and run past the officers some outline ideas of what you have in mind. But they can’t dictate to the elected councillors whether to approve final plans or not, only to recommend. If, as reported above, the council ignores the recommendation and, in effect, goes back on its declared policy, there might be a case for further appeal processes, but that adds delay and expense. That’s part of the risk you take when looking to buy a listed building, and needs to be reflected in the price you’re willing to offer.
I think this is the key to my objection. We have fewer building of “historic” significance. But I suspect even that definition is different for both countries. Just because I had a farmhouse from 1865 doesn’t mean it’s hands-off in the US. It has to have significance other than it’s old.
As I’ve already mentioned, an 1865 farmhouse in the UK probably wouldn’t be listed.
The whole listing thing developed as a reaction to the people whose attitude was “I’ll do what the hell I like with my property” - it wasn’t until the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882 that there was anything to prevent property owners from doing what they will, with what they hold.
That’s how I assumed the process would work. You’re really not getting planning “permission”, you’re getting a general feeling for whether you can do what you want. That’s how it works here: you can ask the city what the planning restrictions are on the property in advance of purchase. They don’t tell you definitively, but you’re able to get a good idea from the restrictions of how likely it would be to get proposed changes approved. Basically, the greater the variance to the plan the less likely to get approval (and the greater the variance the longer the approval process).
I agree with blindboyard that if you don’t do that, tough luck. That’s your fault, not the council’s. You deserve whatever costs and trouble result.
Without restating my posts, it was exactly what they did and why they bought. It was more the complete “Catch-22” contradiction between the council’s planner and the council itself that surprised me. As far as the appeals go, as the show ended, they were deciding on what to do next.
Try Youtube, I’ve watched lots of full episodes there.
Ah, okay. I found one. People looking for a 1.25 million pound hovel. How can people bear to slum like that?
I’ve been watching it on a network called “Dabl” (sounds like “dabble,” get it?), which is one of those digital subchannels. It shows mostly old cooking and home improvement shows. May or may not be available from your television provider.
Checked it out. Some good shows there. Lots of Ceasar Milan and old Canadian shows like Cityline!
I’ve been watching “Reel Truth History Documentaries” channel on Youtube:
They’re generally British focused: history, antiques, WW2 documentaries etc. I think it fed it to me since I watched a couple episodes of Time Team. The Youtube algorithm worked!
It happens from time to time, no doubt, but that’s decision-making by elected representatives for you. The full-time professional bureaucrats don’t decide everything - that’s why they can’t absolutely guarantee that this or that design feature will get it through.
I’m not a planning lawyer, but in my citizen’s understanding, the council has some legal obligation to abide by planning policies for an area that have been previously established by a defined process of consultation and formal approval. There might be room for an appeal to central government or to the courts, depending on how much discretion that left over decisions affecting particular plots of land or particular buildings. Or (I don’t know for sure about this) there might be a way to get the planning committee to re-consider or have it referred to the full council, depending on exactly what the objections to the proposal were.
Yes, that all adds delay and expense, but that’s the risk you take in that situation.
I am confused- not because I don’t see why the bureaucrats can’t dictate whether the councillors approve the plans but because I don’t see why there must be two separate groups involved. My city has historic districts , landmarked buildings and an appointed landmarks preservation commission - and the situation described ,where the planner could not approve an historically accurate extension and the council would not approve a historically inaccurate extension simply couldn’t happen. Not because the commission is appointed rather than elected but because all permits and approvals for renovations or restorations regarding appearance go through the LPC and no other group. Other agencies might approve other aspects - for example, the LPC doesn’t decide whether the use of a building can be changed or whether the plans meet the building code but the zoning board and department of buildings don’t care one whit about the appearance of the building.
Because the organisation was not originally designed to do this kind of work. Like the government, the local council tries to separate the permanent administration from the elected supervision. Elected councillors may sit on committees that decide policy and as individuals, they can take up the concerns of their constituents.
The planning department, for the most part, do a good job in curbing the wilder excesses of developers and individuals, but ultimately it is for the elected (unpaid* and therefore mostly retired) members to have the final say on major projects - those members probably have little or no expertise beyond watching house renovation programmes on TV and a general dislike of anything modern. Their decisions are frequently overturned by government.
*they do get generous allowances, but no actual salary for what is supposedly a part-time job. The leader of an average-sized council with a £100m budget may be paid less than £30k pa.
@doreen has well summarized the North American confusion over the Brit’s system.
To elaborate, here (in Canada at least), the elected council’s responsibility begins and ends with inputting and regularly updating the “master plan” for the city or town. That hopefully detailed plan sets out every possible rule that a builder / homeowner must follow and can vary by neighbourhood or street. In cases where there are historically significant zones or even single buildings there are other rules like aesthetics too. Theoretically lots of work goes into the council plan: including current and future capacities of roads, transit, school, sewage etc
The homeowner (builder) submits their detailed plan to the planning dept. and as long as they’re within the council’s rules i.e. they want no variances, the bureaucrats approve and then inspect to ensure compliance. At no point do the elected officials ever get involved and inject their own personal tastes into individual projects.
That’s why this system is so fascinatingly strange to us (or me at least).
I find it kind of amusing that the spleen being vented at bureaucratic meddling is coming from the land where HOAs famously delight in measuring the length of grass in people’s front yards, banning the drying of laundry outside, checking the color tone on siding etc etc etc.
My sister lives in a swanky neighbourhood in the Lone Star State, Home of the Goddamn Free and she gets pissy letters lecturing her about about things like how long she is permitted to have her trashcans by the kerb on Trash Day, how she is not allowed to leave the Haloween decorations up longer than 3 days, and god knows what else. And she kowtows to them just as much as anyone in England grovels before the council.
One point often missed about listed buildings, conservation areas and the like is that they very rarely Just Happen. You buy a listed building, you know perfectly well what you are getting yourself into, which is 5x more paperwork than the already significant amount that comes with a normal properly. Don’t want to jump through those hoops, go buy a modern biscuit box house or apartment. People generally buy these old buildings because they are seen as desirable, often for exactly the reasons they are listed.
Our property in London is in an area that that was designated a conservation area soon after we bought it (after all sorts of public consultations and carryings-on). Nearly every property owner rejoiced since it would pretty much guarantee a rise in property values. The vast majority of the regulations boil down to “no you can’t go for the cheapest and ugliest possible method of doing any building work, you have to go for something that looks nice and suits the character of the area”. The middle-class types flock to such areas, pay a big premium for properties there, and then promptly start bitching when the council turns down their cunning plan to double the size by tearing off the pitched roof and replacing it with a two-storey flat-roof mini-condo.
I haven’t watched any of those programmes in years, but the hidden subtext was often “Oh, I bought this tumbledown old property for a fraction of the usual price because it comes with a whole heap of extra restrictions due to its legal status. How DARE the council subject ME to the same painfully arbitrary flim-flam that put off all the professional property developers that would normally have outbid me significantly for such a desirable bit of real estate???” :rolleyes:
Bear in mind that in the UK you buy the land has a bit of value, the building has a bit of value, the right to have a building on the land has HUGE value and the right to build new or extend existing property on the land has ENORMOUS value. I think we paid a quarter of a million quid for an apartment where the free hold on the land was worth like twenty grand, and the insured replacement value of the building was something stupid like seventy thousand. Permission to build an extension out onto the garden would probably have doubled the value of the property even without actually building anything.
I understand all of that , it happens in my city as well with landmarked buildings or historic districts. What I find baffling is one thing and one thing only - the fact that there can be a catch 22 where the planner can’t/won’t approve an historically accurate extension and the council can’t/won’t approve a historically inaccurate extension so that in effect, no extension can be built ( because there is no extension which both entities will approve) but there is no rule actually prohibiting extensions. Well two things actually - I also don’t understand why this seems to be sort of waved away as being perfectly normal , to have to get approval from two different groups with apparently different goals and standards.
It’s got nothing really to do with bureaucratic meddling- I understand bureaucratic meddling. We’ve got plenty of it here. This is more like your sister’s HOA and the actual government had regulations that were opposite each other so that you could never be in compliance with both, unless you simply didn’t conduct the regulated activity. I’ve been trying to thing of an example, and they all strike me as absurd because they couldn’t happen. For example, the municipal/county government mandates parallel parking on public streets. If the streets in the development are public streets, that’s the end of the story - the government regulates parking. If the streets are private streets, the development is free to mandate angle parking or perpendicular parking and government regulations don’t apply. There’s never a situation where the government requires parallel and the HOA requires angle parking and so it is impossible for me to park without violating one of the rules.
Many people in the UK would also have difficulty understanding the distinction. There are many different forms of Council, from Parish Councils which have no power and very little influence to the big Metropolitan districts, complete with a Mayor and a multi-million Pound budget. The money comes mostly from Central Government but also from “Council Tax” which is based on some notional rentable value. This is how the Council is held to account by the electors - Theoretically, at least, they can opt for tight budgeting and low expenditure on social services, or more services but higher taxes.
They are all controlled by people elected by their constituents, but even the big cities are seriously constrained in how they can raise and spend money. For example, the government funds education to the tune of £116 billion, but the Council has to decide how best to allocate the cash. Councils get 90% of their income from Central Government. Provision of children and adult’s social care services accounts for more than half of most budgets.
There is a whole mish-mash of statutory and other services that a Council has to provide. They repair local roads and empty the bins, as well as Police, Fire and Rescue (but not ambulance). They maintain parks (and zoos in some cases) and subsidise theatres and other local amenities.
Please forgive me if I sound stupid, but I just want to make sure I understand - it seems to me that you are using (big G ) “Government” to refer to the national government and “council” to refer to what I would call a lower level of government. My city has an elected City Council and a separately elected mayor- but the council/mayor combination is still government ( local or municipal)