Heritage

The Heritage Team offer critical insight and support on all aspects of the historic built environment from purchase of a property or site through the decision making process and beyond. We provide clear advice on the constraints and opportunities associated with development that may affect any type of heritage asset whether that be an area designation, an individual listed building or a non-designated asset. We are experienced expert witnesses and can help you with your appeal process, or in considering the implications of a refusal and finding a route to a successful application. We can advise and work alongside your architect or other team members to find the most sensitive solution in terms of heritage impact, providing clarity early on in the process. Heritage Assessments and Heritage Statements are the core documents we produce to inform and assist decision making on our client’s behalf. We are also familiar with all types of appeal work, Environmental Impact Assessment, research and interpretation and the effects of retrofit, repair and sustainability measures within historic buildings. 

 

The team includes a wide range of skills drawn from varied backgrounds including former local authority experience. Other team members have experience in archaeological disciplines or wider landscape and townscape appraisal including Environmental Impact Assessment and work in Wales. We work closely together to ensure our varied experience and knowledge base is shared so that any project benefits from our team’s collective experience. Our team are willing to take on any type of building or site, rural, urban,domestic, industrial, schools or hospitals, cinemas or town halls, civic centres or medieval burgage plots, planned garden suburbs or neglected backland plots, a single domestic extension or sustainable urban extensions.

 

If you have just purchased a listed building we can help you understand what this means in terms of permissions you may need, and what might be possible to achieve in terms of alterations. We can help you understand how to make your property efficient and sustainable while protecting its heritage qualities. If your site falls within in the setting of heritage assets, whether that is a single listed building or an entire conservation area, we can assist with securing a design which is sensitive to those assets. We can help if your site is affected by multiple assets of different types or if it is within a sensitive heritage context like a registered park, world heritage site or conservation area. 

 

We understand where heritage matters overlap with other disciplines and can advise you early if you are also likely to need assistance with, for example, trees or ecology. Our team are happy to work on projects of any scale, understanding that even small changes can have a big effect, and that large developments can be designed to create positive new experiences within our historic environment