What listed building rules mean during an Edinburgh renovation

Look at the junctions on the drawing

A new cabinet stops below an old cornice. A service route passes a joist. The bathroom floor meets the original threshold. We ask how those details are meant to work before the room is opened up.

To check which parts of your renovation we can undertake, see our renovation services.

“Make good as required” is too loose where the easy site solution could involve cutting a cornice, skirting, panel or fireplace. We want the architect’s drawing and specification to deal with the meeting between old and new work.

Listing can cover the interior and exterior, objects or structures fixed to the building, and some structures within its curtilage, subject to the statutory rules and exclusions. Historic Environment Scotland gives the current outline in its listed buildings guidance.

For construction within that proposal, see our listed building renovation service in Edinburgh. The consent guide explains the information to settle before asking for a build price.

Category C does not mean the interior is free to alter

Categories A, B and C describe relative architectural or historic interest. They are not three levels of consent protection. Historic Environment Scotland explains the categories in Annex 2 of its designation guidance.

The listing description helps explain the building’s interest, but it is not a complete room-by-room inventory. We would not treat an omitted door or fireplace as permission to remove it.

Work that affects the building’s character may require listed building consent. Carrying out such work without consent is an offence under section 8 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997. Historic Environment Scotland’s consent guidance should be read alongside advice for the actual proposal.

What City of Edinburgh Council says about interiors

The Council’s listed buildings and conservation areas guidance says listed building consent is required for any internal alteration that will alter the character of the building. Planning permission is not required for internal alterations, but a separate building warrant and other requirements may still apply. Historic Environment Scotland says there is no fee for a listed building consent application, and the Council’s application page links to the national ePlanning portal.

The same guidance sets out what the Council looks for inside. Decorative plasterwork and cornices should be preserved, and suspended ceilings should never be formed in principal rooms or entrance halls that have decorative plasterwork. Original chimneypieces and fireplaces should not be removed, even where the chimney is redundant, and the removal of a chimney breast is almost never acceptable. There is a presumption against dividing original room layouts or creating open-plan layouts. Secondary glazing is encouraged, usually as an independent inner window, and depending on the design it may not need consent.

If work has already been done without consent, the Council says it does not issue letters of comfort for unauthorised works to listed buildings. Where a formal decision is needed, an application for listed building consent is submitted and a decision notice is issued. Our building warrant guide explains the separate building standards route.

The bathroom may move on paper

The soil stack and gravity are less accommodating. A wet-room floor needs enough build-up for falls and tanking, sometimes over a timber structure. The visually preferred layout can demand the most disruptive route through old fabric.

We can show an architect where the construction becomes awkward. The architect leads the design and the consent route. Under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997, though, the offence of carrying out unauthorised works falls on anyone who carries out, or causes to be carried out, the works, which includes the contractor and the owner. The consent and its conditions need to be in hand before work starts, and we then work to the approved drawings, conditions and specification.

Listed building consent and a building warrant answer different questions. One concerns the effect on the listed building’s special character; the other concerns building standards. A project can need both.

Where opening up shows that the support below differs from the assumption in the design, the engineer revises the detail and work in that area waits. For a listed building, the architect would also need to consider whether the revised work remained within the consent.

We want the approved drawings, consent conditions and relevant specifications before pricing construction. Where a detail cannot be confirmed until opening up, the scope should say so and name the person who will decide it.