When looking for a house to buy, if it is not absolutely brand new, then it ill be second hand. Many quite old properties will be special to the owners but not so important as to need any specific part of it listing. Unlike the majority of those properties that take up the first 20 pages of country living and style magazines every week. Those places have some architectural or other historical feature that someone somewhere has deemed to be exciting and irreplaceable enough to require the local council to record the fact and insist on it being listed. Once listing has been put in place there are then many considerations that must be taken whenever anything at all is needed to be done in the way of repairs, refurbishment and restoration.
To ensure one’s refurbishment or restoration plans do not fall foul of existing listing rules and regulations, it will be far cheaper in the long run to engage an advisory consultant or project manager who is absolutely familiar in every way with the heritage consent processes. They will indeed know whether that idea that involves re-plastering will need listed consent. But it will depend on where the wall is that needs re-plastering and whether you plan to remove cement that was put in prior to listing and is now causing a major damp problem. The local authority would be unwise to refuse this permission to proceed as the damp problem itself is a danger to the building. However if the planned improvement involves removing fabric of historical significance i.e. within the requiring of the property, then consent will be needed to be applied for although it is not always automatically refused if the work is not particularly disruptive.
In every case where a historic or heritage property is being looked at as a possible project, once the decision has been made to consider the price and location etc. engaging with the local conservation officer at the council is definitely a sound idea as every piece of planned work will need to be discussed as to whether that officer’s approval or advice is needed before even asking for quotations.