Conservation Order

user1977

If it is a conservation area (and it's still not very clear from your posts that's what you mean), the planning section of the council's website should provide further guidance about what sort of features they are trying to conserve, and what you'd need to get permission to do.

GDB2222

FreeBear said:

GDB2222 said: Conservation areas are harder to find, and you may need to check with your local council. As an example, my local council website lists over a dozen conservation areas within the borough:

Also have a number of conservation areas around here. Including a 1930s council estate of all things. There are also a number of building that have what the council call "local listed building status". Not sure what that means in terms of internal alterations, or even what enforcement powers the council would have.

This link tries very hard not to say that locally listed makes no difference at all!

https://www.islington.gov.uk/planning/designandconservation/locally_listed_buildings

fatbelly

For £3 you can have a look at the land Registry title register

https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-property-and-land/copies-of-deeds

user1977

fatbelly said:

For £3 you can have a look at the land Registry title register

https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-property-and-land/copies-of-deeds

For what? It’s unlikely to tell you anything about planning matters.

For free, you can have a look at the planning section of the council's website.

jog

It is probably worth contacting your local planning dept to check what you could do.

 When we bought our house last year, we submitted a pre-planning enquiry before we exchanged contracts, we listed all the things we were thinking we might like to do, as part of the property sits inside a conservation area boundary. The planning response was very helpful in outlining which bits could be done as permitted development and which would need planning advice. 

One thing our local planner told us was that, in the conservation area we are in, they want to maintain the look of the area, therefore generally any building work at the front of the property would need planning consent, but work to the back out of sight of the road, could be done under permitted development, as long as it met the PD rules. He also assured us that as long as work at the front was in keeping with the property and area, we should be able to do what we were thinking of, this included a garage conversion. So as I said earlier, do talk to the planning dept, they can be very helpful.

As others have said, you also need to be really clear what the situation is re conservation area etc. Our council has an interactive map where you can check all sorts of things about properties. I haven’t heard of an individual house having a conservation order, but a house can sit in a conservation area. I’m afraid we did find when we were house hunting, that some estate agents are not very knowledgeable about such things, and you need to do your own research. 

eddddy

Assuming you mean the house is in a Conservation Area, as others say, it's worth talking to the planners.

Here's a couple of situations that I encountered...

• a planning department told me that they would "look sympathetically" at a plan to replace rotten 1850's timber sash windows in a conservation area with heritage upvc sash windows, if the design of the new upvc windows was sufficiently similar  to the original timber ones

More generally, their policy was that you could replace "like for like" without consent, but if you wanted to make changes, the changes had to be in character with the building.

Somebody had put nasty cheap plastic guttering and downpipes on an old building, before the area became a conservation area. It needed replacing.

The planning department said that the guttering and downpipes could be replaced "like for like" without consent (i.e. cheap nasty plastic) - but if they wanted consent for something different, they would only allow square cast iron, as that is what the building would have had originally (which would have to be custom made, and be super-expensive).

gwynlas

GDB2222 said:

FreeBear said:

GDB2222 said: Conservation areas are harder to find, and you may need to check with your local council. As an example, my local council website lists over a dozen conservation areas within the borough:

Also have a number of conservation areas around here. Including a 1930s council estate of all things. There are also a number of building that have what the council call "local listed building status". Not sure what that means in terms of internal alterations, or even what enforcement powers the council would have.

This link tries very hard not to say that locally listed makes no difference at all!

https://www.islington.gov.uk/planning/designandconservation/locally_listed_buildings

A lot of the London terraces in Islington are listed but very few of them have not been internally redeveloped into flats of various types. Conservation areas and listings are generally more concerned with maintaing street scenes than what happens behind the facade. Some listed buildings might have incongruous additions completed prior to date of listing which can benefit from retro fitting more appropriate glazing for example.Even listings of both internal and external features can be looked at by planning officers if changes are necessary to maintain property as habitable accommodation.