The IHBC has delivered its response to the draft ‘Advice Note’ from Historic England (HE) on ‘Listed Buildings and Curtilage’ highlighting concerns over uncertainty and ambiguity in the document, and that practitioners’ value and need advice that is clear and unambiguous.
Points on the revised draft were raised first in the context of the withdrawal of the original Advice Note as it had generated problems for many IHBC members and practitioners, including in Scotland where the original advice also was seen to threaten practice standards, and included:
- The advice needs to emphasise that the curtilage tests should be taken as a whole and that no one factor can be decisive
- The guidance should more strongly stress that all cases have to be determined individually on their own merits (and that such determination should be founded primarily on the three Calderdale tests combined with two additional tests, one arising from the Debenhams decision and the fifth test, namely whether the object or structure within the curtilage of a listed building, which though not fixed to the building, forms part of the land and has done so since before 1 July 1948.)
- The examples given might better use past cases where binding decisions have been made in the courts so that there can at least be certainty and clarity about those findings.
- It would be helpful to provide advice in this document about complications, which may arise, around having a separately listed structure within the curtilage of the building
- The document should explain the route of HE’s services for revisiting the listing with a view to establishing what requires Listed Building Consent and what does not, within an appropriate timescale.
Read the response
