21/06/2026
PLANNING SUCCESS
We were pleased to secure a valuable planning consent for a client who had found themselves in difficulties because of lack of permissions for work completed to their Listed house located within an Islington Conservation Area.
An increasing number of our projects are to deal with changes to Listed Buildings or buildings in Conservation Areas that do not have planning permission. This can be for a number of non-sinister reasons:
‘We were in a hurry and never got around to it’. Often there was a baby in the pipeline!
Or ‘We didn’t think we needed Planning Permission’. A common one and another example, if more were needed, of the importance of getting reliable professional advice before embarking on almost any building project.
Or, as in this case, changes were made to the house before the current owner bought it.
That was the case with this client. They had bought their Grade II Listed house over 25 years ago when legal searches were perhaps less thorough or access to information was more limited. For whatever reason our client was oblivious to the fact that some of the changes to the house when they bought it had not been consented.
To make things worse, shortly after they completed their purchase, and persuaded by a local builder that they did not require permission, they embarked on some further amendments to the internal layout of the house.
Fast forward to 2025 and our client wanted to sell the house and the lack of any consents, including Building Control, for any of the work that had taken place over the previous 50-odd years became a huge issue. Sales fell through, Local Authority Enforcement became involved and the client was facing the possibility of having to return their house to its layout in the late 1800s!
That’s when we became involved. We used our extensive experience with Listed Buildings and Conservation Area work to persuade the Planning and Conservation officers that a more limited campaign of restoration was appropriate and no structural work (the real fear in terms of time, money and their need to sell the house) would be required.
The irony, of course, is that if you complete any building work that requires permission without it, there’s a good chance, particularly in the modern era, that this will emerge and you may be forced to make a full retrospective planning or Listed Building/Conservation Area application with the very real risk that current guidelines and regulations will require you to return the building to its pre-change position.
You certainly won’t have saved any money on either professional fees or building costs and needing to extend selling times and the uncertainty around the planning process is always stressful.
If you are concerned and need discrete and confidential advice about whether your home or building you own is clear of any planning or enforcement issues, get in touch and one of our team will be able to talk you through the process and advise you how you could proceed.
