Data standards

Challenges with listed buildings

Kieran Wint — 2024-08-09

Getting a nationally consistent listed buildings dataset suitable for planning decision making is difficult.

There are a number of challenges in identifying a listing for planning purposes that local planning authorities (LPAs) face. It’s extremely costly to proactively assess every single listing to achieve a high level of data quality, and we have to work collaboratively to reach a solution.

TL;DR - Listed buildings for planning is HARD!

What we have found out

Historic England are responsible for listing buildings that need protection, and they produce a digital national register. They publish point data and some polygon data but this dataset is not suitable for planning decision making (and will likely never be).

After a conversation with Historic England and reviewing the legislation, we understood that they own ‘the listing’, but only look at it from the viewpoint of “why is this special or of historic/architectural interest?”

What we need is listed building data, but for the purposes of planning. This led us to the term, “curtilage.”

Curtilage = hard

Curtilage is inherently difficult to define, simply because there is no rigid definition, only guidance produced by Historic England. Our understanding is that curtilage is the extent of a listing, so, the land and other buildings that are associated with the main listed building. This process for defining curtilage involves considering the physical layout, historical ownership and the use of the buildings, and it would only be absolutely confirmed as correct curtilage should it be challenged, go to court and be subject to judicial review.

Effectively, for planning purposes, the guidance requires that the LPA produces a buffer around the specific part of a building that is protected, however it does so in a very labour intensive and pre-digital way.

This makes things really quite hard for an LPA, as we are essentially asking for data that we won’t know is definitely right unless subject to legal challenge. Not ideal.

Other workstreams that feed in

After discovering that the curtilage is what we need for planning, we were made aware that HMLR are also in the process of collecting this data for the purposes of their local land charges register. We have since picked up with them and are working to see if we can share this data, among more technical elements such as making sure the specifications align.

We have found that the data is a good proxy for the curtilage needed for planning purposes, however, although HMLR are collecting what they call curtilage it has a different definition to the Historic England guidance. So, even if this data is published we still need to understand how suitable it is and what guidance we need to give around its use.

How are we getting through it?

So, we understand there are a lot of challenges with obtaining and providing a listed buildings dataset suitable for planning decision making.

We have initiated fortnightly meetings with a group of LPAs to share our understanding, identify any issues, concerns, and work together on potential solutions.

We know this data is really important for planning decision making, so we need to work out a way forwards, but we need to work together to do this in a way that is acceptable to all.

Credit: Gwen Henderson (Content lead)