Red tape can make a listing more a curse than a blessing

Oh joy! The listed building system is 70 years old and, to celebrate, Historic England has added five more to the existing tally of nearly 400,000 protected buildings (more than 500 of which are quite literally pigsties).

Nuclear bunkers, cabmen’s shelters, the giant concrete “Sound Mirrors” (pre-radar acoustic early warning systems), swimming pools, petrol stations – examples of all of these, as well as more obvious monuments such as Blenheim Palace, have had the cloak of protection flung over them. The latest crop includes the semi-underground “hobbit house” that architect Arthur Quarmby built for himself and family in the 1970s. It was on the market last year. What a nasty surprise for the new owner.

For listing can be, in one sense, glorious: a celebration of the amazing diversity, as well as quality, of British buildings. But to their owners, it can be a pain in the neck.

I write this from Ramsgate. When a drugcrazed young man smashed up several 19th-century shop fronts on the High Street some time ago, his mother made him apologise for the damage. But their listed status means that at least one owner has found his too costly to replace, so it’s still boarded up.

Here, I’m on the side of the listers. Shop fronts are seen by many passers-by each day and should be preserved. But what about private houses? An Englishman’s home is only his castle when it’s unlisted. I went to one Edwardian pile recently whose owners couldn’t change the light fittings without permission.

Even worse is the plight of the couple who’ve just bought a townhouse from about 1800, listed only Grade II. They’d like to lavish love, care, the attentions of a distinguished architect and a great deal of money on it – provided they can make a few small adjustments, in order to live in it to their satisfaction. The conservation police are doing their darndest to obstruct them. I hope they don’t give up.

Meanwhile, we have just been told that it will take two years to get planning permission for the modest works we’d like to begin at our London home (unlisted but in a conservation area).

“If only we’d known how much trouble it would be, we’d never have begun.” I hear owners say this all the time. It’s hardly the way to encourage people to cherish heritage. Particularly when they find that conservation officials – likely to be young and inexperienced in these times of cuts – are rather less knowledgeable about architecture than them or their expert advisers. And it’s galling to find matters of personal taste – paint colours, the removal of insertions made in the 20th century – minutely examined, when a walk into the local town centre shows the public realm in disarray.

After the Second World War, when listing started, it had a role. Horribly run down, Britain was being demolished wholesale. Entire historic neighbourhoods could be swept away. Listing was a necessary bulwark against philistinism.

It still does good: there are rogues out there, as well as blundering workmen. But officialdom is all too keen to see the mote in the owner’s eye while ignoring the beam in its own. Today’s Philistine may not be the poor country house owner, shelling out his own money to keep the property in repair, but the listed buildings officer who does his best to make it impossible to live in.

Clive Aslet is editor-at-large of ‘Country Life’ READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion