Letter to the editor: Why not issue guidance on altering old buildings?

It might help if he thinks about listed buildings not in cultural terms – ‘heritage’ – but in economic ones.

Listed buildings have a part to play in building a strong economy – more, it turns out, than other buildings. Across the UK, the gross value added of businesses operating out of listed buildings exceeds that of businesses in non-listed buildings by 4.4%. Listed buildings are favoured by start-up businesses and those in the knowledge economy, which partly explains this, and these happen to be sectors encouraged by the States. In the countryside, buildings in areas with the highest density of listed buildings (between 9% and 20% per 100 people, compared to 4% in Jersey) command a substantial premium over the regional average – between 20% to over 200%. Meanwhile, the areas with the fewest listed buildings are on average 20% cheaper than the regional average.

So easing restrictions on listed buildings to the extent, say, they are no longer worth listing, would be an economically retrograde step, affecting both business and house values. Facilitating change in listed buildings, on the other hand, is desirable – just as it is for any other building. We want them to be usable, warm and as convenient as possible. So how to do this without devaluing them?

Listed buildings are listed because they have what is known as ‘special significance’. How do you protect ‘special significance’? If Mr Luce wants building owners to be able to do as they please, then he will be overturning policies set out in the Island Plan and any legal challenge to this will have a strong case.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t be difficult to allow listed-building owners to carry out repairs without the need for consent provided they are done to a suitable standard. New windows? Fine, provided they look okay and are suitable for the building in question. Double glazing? Fine, provided the windows removed are not the rarest examples of 18th-century windows in the Island. Repointing or painting? Fine, provided appropriate mortar is used and the paint colour doesn’t make it look like a branch of Normans.

So why not produce information that tells us all what we can and can’t do? Guidance on windows and doors, guidance on how best to insulate, heat, redecorate, re-roof and repair historic buildings. This would help turn the Planning Department into the useful enabling organisation it might be, rather than the restrictive one it now is.

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