Wealden District Council
You are using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.
Parts of our website may display incorrectly or not work at all. Please consider downloading an up to date browser such as Chrome or Firefox.

Advice on Works to a Listed Building

Wealden District Council does not provide advice on Listed Buildings located within the South Downs National Park. Please refer to the South Downs National Park website  for further advice and information.

Historic England Advice

Historic England has a wealth of advice on works to listed buildings, from extensions, to alterations and repair. Further advice can be accessed on the Historic England website .

Historic England has published recent guidance about listed building consent as an application process and on how to judge whether proposals need consent including advice on when and how to apply for listed building consent.

In addition to the advice above, Historic England has further advice on common works to listed buildings for homeowners and traditional farm building.

You may benefit from the services of an independent heritage consultant. While we cannot recommend any particular company, the following websites may be useful:

Wealden Design Guide

If you are considering submitting an application to extend or alter a listed building , you are advised to look at the Wealden Design Guide – Chapter 12,  a Supplementary Planning Document, the purpose of which is to encourage a higher standard of design for development within the District. This chapter provides specific advice to help you through the process of submitting applications and to provide help in ensuring proposals are sympathetic to these special buildings.

General advice on preparing an application

The Council would expect that any proposals are informed by an understanding of the significance of the listed building. Historic England provides guidance on understanding significance:

You may also find it useful to view our Heritage Statement webpage.

Information required to support applications can be found in the local list planning validation guide.

Important: Service Update

We are pleased to re-launch the pre-application service for Heritage. The limited service will be capped to no more than 4 applications per month on a first come first served basis. 

We offer an Enquiry Service which can help you to understand whether listed building consent is required for works to a listed building. This service is charged at £48 + VAT. 

The enquiry service cannot be used if you are looking to submit a planning application and require detailed advice to alter or extend a listed building. In these cases use our chargeable pre-application advice service as outlined on these pages for advice on your proposal including design and other planning issues.

You should be aware that any advice given by the Council in relation to the services will be based on the Officers professional judgement and without prejudice to the formal consideration of any subsequent planning application.

Favourable pre-application advice cannot guarantee that a subsequent application will be successful. This is because when we receive a formal application it will be subject to further consultation and publicity which may raise other issues.

Pre-application requests for advice will not be subject to any publicity but we may be obliged to release documents if we receive a Freedom of Information request or Environmental Information Request.