Heritage Consultations

Heritage Consultations

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Not every heritage question needs a full report. Sometimes what you need is forty-five minutes with someone who knows the answer, before you commit to anything at all.

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Blue Willow Heritage offers fixed-fee, one-to-one consultations for owners of listed buildings, prospective buyers, and anyone trying to work out where they stand with a historic property. It is the same expertise that goes into our Heritage Statements and Listed Building Consent applications, made available in the form that suits a great many people best: a straightforward conversation, at a price that is known in advance.

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How Does it Work?

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Before we speak, we review your building's entry on the National Heritage List for England, the relevant local planning policy position, and any drawings, photographs or correspondence you send through. That preparation is included in the fee, and it is what allows a short conversation to be genuinely useful rather than a standing start. You are not paying for someone to read your list entry for the first time while you wait.

 

The consultation itself is yours to direct. Most people arrive with a single question that has been troubling them for weeks; some arrive with a list. Either is fine.

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Who is it For?

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Listed buildings are possibly one of the most misunderstood features of planning law, and there are often more myths about what it means to own and carry out work on a listed building than there are facts. Everybody has heard a horror story or two about the difficulty involved in making even the most minor changes, as well as dubious easy answers to complicated heritage questions that have the potential to get you into even more trouble.

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The result is that a great many people either abandon perfectly achievable proposals because they have been told the wrong thing, or press ahead with works that were never going to be acceptable and find themselves in difficulty later. Both outcomes are avoidable, and both are considerably more expensive than a conversation would have been.

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A consultation is likely to be worth your time if you are planning an extension or alteration and want to know whether it stands a realistic chance; if you are considering buying a listed property and want to understand what you would be taking on; if you have been told by a conservation officer that something is not possible and want a second opinion on whether that is really the end of the matter; or if you simply cannot work out whether what you want to do requires Listed Building Consent at all.

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It is equally useful for architects, planning agents and developers who need a quick heritage read on a site before committing time to a design.

 

What Will I Come Away With?

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An honest assessment of whether your proposal is likely to succeed, and why. The specific objections a conservation officer is likely to raise, and how they might be answered. Clarity on what does and does not require consent. A sense of what to do next, in what order, and roughly what it ought to cost.

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Just as importantly, you will get an honest answer about whether you need a heritage consultant at all. A good deal of what comes up in these conversations turns out to be entirely manageable without further professional involvement, and we would far rather tell you that than sell you a report you do not need. Where fuller work genuinely is required — a Heritage Statement, an Impact Assessment, or support with an appeal — we will say so and quote for it separately, with no obligation on you to proceed.

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What a consultation is not is a written report. It does not include a site visit, it does not constitute legal advice, and it cannot guarantee any particular planning outcome, because nobody is in a position to guarantee that. What it can do is tell you what is likely, and why, from someone who has spent over a decade making these arguments successfully.

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Why Take Advice Early?

 

Far from being a formality, early heritage advice adds real value at every stage of a project. A great deal of the work that comes into Blue Willow Heritage involves unpicking decisions taken at the very beginning, before anyone thought to ask the right questions — designs drawn up without any understanding of where a building's significance actually lies, applications submitted without the evidence to support them, or works carried out in good faith that turn out to have required consent.

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The end result of getting this right at the outset is night and day. Proposals informed by an early understanding of significance are cheaper to develop, faster to consent, and considerably more likely to succeed. They also tend to produce better buildings, which is ultimately the point of the exercise.

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Forty-five minutes at the start of a project is a very small investment against the cost of a refused application, an abandoned scheme, or an enforcement notice arriving several years later.

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Fees and Booking

 

A heritage consultation is £120, including the preparatory review of your list entry and any material you send. Appointments are booked and paid for online, and you can reschedule free of charge up to forty-eight hours beforehand.

 

Once booked, please email anything relevant — the property address, any drawings or sketches, photographs of the areas concerned, and any correspondence from your local planning authority — to info@bluewillowheritage.co.uk at least 48 hours before your appointment, so that there is time to review it properly.

 

If it becomes clear beforehand that your question falls outside our expertise, or that you need a different kind of professional altogether, we will tell you and refund you in full rather than take the booking. By booking, you accept our terms of consultation and cancellation policy, which can be found below.