Listed Buildings.
Buildings of special architectural or historic interest. Listing protects the whole building — inside and out — and any works affecting its special interest need listed-building consent, judged against a duty to preserve.
- Like-for-like repair with matching materials
- Reversible internal interventions
- Sensitive reinstatement of lost features
- Servicing that respects fabric
- Extensions and new openings
- Changes to historic plan-form or fabric
- Replacement windows / rooflights
- Works to setting and curtilage
- Demolition of a listed building
- Loss of primary historic fabric
- Harm to Grade I / II* interiors
- Unauthorised works — a criminal offence
Listing is national, not local: Historic England lists buildings and the listing covers the entire structure plus any object or structure fixed to it, and pre-1948 buildings within its curtilage. Works that affect the special interest — internal or external — need listed-building consent under s.7 of the 1990 Act, separate from planning permission.
When deciding consent, the authority and the Secretary of State have a duty under s.16/s.66 to have special regard to the desirability of preserving the building, its setting and features. NPPF requires "great weight" to the asset’s conservation, scaled to its grade — Grade I and II* are exceptional and harm needs the clearest justification.
Listing rarely stops you building — it governs what you can change. The work is proving your scheme preserves the building’s special interest, and the bar rises steeply with grade.
Most refusals come from harm that a heritage statement would have caught early. Establish significance first, design to it, and bring the conservation officer in before you submit.
How schemes actually fare inside this designation — approval rates, appeal survival, which authorities apply it hardest — needs the designation joined to the decision record. That join isn’t built, so those figures aren’t published here. We won’t estimate them.
The Atlas maps every London listed building against INSPIRE parcels. Check your site’s listings and how consent applications nearby have fared.