Advice when dealing with Non-Designated Heritage Assets

By Gary Ellerd-Elliott, Founder and CEO of 3a Asset Management. In this article, he tells his own experience dealing with non-designated heritage assets, and how you can make sure you don’t make the same mistakes.

When we purchased the Wheatsheaf Coaching Inn back in September 2017, we never envisaged the roller coaster journey it would take us on. That said, the lessons it has taught us, we could never have got from any classroom or training guru.

We purchased the building knowing it was in a conservation area, however it wasn’t listed so we weren’t too concerned with what we had been advised we could develop on the site; how wrong we were. 

Our first application in January 2018 was met with fierce opposition: 26 letters within the first 24 hours of being online. The locals were not happy with our proposal. It transpired that the advisors we had instructed to put together the application had not engaged with the local residents, parish council or the planners and had just submitted the application. This was like a red rag to a bull as we later found out. We chose to withdraw and regroup.

Once we got over the shock, we took the decision to let go of the advisors and take a more hands-on approach. We engaged with the locals and the parish council and discovered that the site had been a battle ground for the locals for a number of years, with previous owners closing it as a public house a number of years earlier. Having engaged with them, we put together a new plan and application, one which they fully supported.

We then met with the local planners to find out that the conservation officer deemed the Wheatsheaf a non-designated heritage asset, which in layman terms means: any building that the local planning authority deem to have a degree of heritage significance but that does not meet the criteria for designated heritage asset status.

Now the real learning began.

With the meeting with the conservation officer and case officer concluded and the agreement that the Wheatsheaf Coaching Inn was the non-designated heritage asset, we submitted our new application and later received approval, albeit with the normal pre-conditions in January 2019. 

We began discharging the conditions and were ready to start construction in August 2019. We thought, “now we can crack on and build”, but again our naivety came back to haunt us.

Building control and the warranty provider identified an issue with the roof structure on one of the barns that we were converting, which would mean we would have to replace the whole roof. As this was outside the agreed planning approval, we engaged with the case officer to check what we needed to do.

Upon conducting a site visit with the case officer and the conservation officer, they identified that the barn roof had Collyweston slate on it and therefore wanted any new roof to have Collyweston reinstated. Given the cost and limited availability of Collyweston slate, we asked if we could use a replica slate such as Siga Heritage, as the barn was not the non-designated heritage asset the Coach Inn was.

This is when our naïve approach and understanding of planning really kicked in, as well as us believing and trusting that people stick to what they say.

It became apparent that the conservation officer was determined with his opinion that we needed to replace the Collyweston like for like. It didn’t matter what we presented to them to mitigate that this would be near impossible with the cost involved and the limited supply; they were not budging from their stance. 

After much to and froing between all parties, we held a zoom meeting with our planning consultant, our heritage consultant, the conservation officer and case officer whereby we believed we had agreed a temporary measure to reroof the barn in Siga Heritage whilst we went to appeal on the matter, only to receive refusal for this four days later.

What was going on? We couldn’t get our heads around what was happening. They had verbally agreed to the temporary measure and now we had a refusal in hand.  

It transpired that the case officer and conservation officer believed that no agreement had been made on their part.

As we had not recorded or provided minutes to our original meeting with the case officer or conservation officer, we had no record of them stating that only the Wheatsheaf Coaching Inn was the non-designated heritage asset and that the barns were of no interest to them, and we had no recording of the zoom meeting as it had been set up by the case officer.

We had spent 10 months arguing this point and still had no resolution apart from: take it to appeal or give them what they wanted.

We were advised that the appeal process could take up to 12 months and there was no guarantee that we would get the result we wanted. As the rest of the build was reaching its conclusion, we took the decision to reroof the barn in Collyweston, as we now had a supplier who could undertake the work.

So, what did this teach us? 

Make sure that all meetings with planning and conservation officers are recorded and minutes taken to refer back to if required. It could save you tens of thousands of pounds.

Not all advisors have your interests in mind. Be careful who you align with and make sure they have a proven track record of delivering what you want.

When dealing with non-designated heritage assets, make sure you clarify and have written record of what is and isn’t the asset. Although conservation officers are only consultees, in most cases -ours included-, a case officer will rarely if ever go against them.

And finally: if you are going to do a conversion of a building with a Collyweston roof, make sure you know the cost of replacing it and factor it into your budget, otherwise you could be in for a nasty shock.

To conclude, this project has been extremely challenging and has had us scratching our heads at many times throughout 3 years. However, now that it is finally coming to an end, the final properties are amazing. To know that these buildings will be around for another 150 years and stand the test of time makes all the hard work worthwhile.

If you want to know more about this project, then feel free to contact me on: gary@3eassets.co.uk

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