Context 153 - March 2018

C O N T E X T 1 5 3 : M A R C H 2 0 1 8 51 Local listing in Leicester The election of a city mayor and the formation of a heritage partnership have led to a resurvey of Leicester’s historic buildings and to local listing being taken more seriously. Attention is currently being focused on the buildings of local interest lists (LIL), otherwise known as local, or non-designated, heritage assets. Trying to get a building listed is difficult. Ever since the Leicester Civic Society was founded in 1971, we have felt that listing procedures are weighted against designation. Buildings – works of architecture – are the only works of art that can not be moved, so applying perceived national standards to something that is by definition local and can not be transposed to another part of the nation appears to be contradictory. Leicester has had a local interest list since 1994. It was often ignored by the local planning authority and one awoke on average once a year to discover a building had been demolished with little or no notice being either advertised or given. Things started to change rapidly with the election of Sir Peter Soulsby as city mayor in May 2011. One of his first pledges was to form a heritage partnership to involve the city council closely with all voluntary bodies concerned with the city’s heritage. In that year the conservation and design team of planning and economic development made a presentation to the partnership on a proposed resurvey of the LIL. It was not until 2013 that work on this was commenced in earnest.We had 396 listed buildings and a further 291 on the existing LIL, and we estimated a resurvey could potentially raise this to around 450. The council appealed to voluntary bodies to assist: this call was answered by Leicester Civic Society and Leicestershire Industrial History Society (LIHS). The Civic Society has a team of hard-working volunteers who go out on to our streets and who have been heavily involved in three major initiatives over the last nine years: Heritage at Risk, potential new conservation areas and the LIL. Historic England’s Good Practice Guide to Local Listing says: ‘Local heritage listing is a means for a community and a local authority to jointly identify heritage assets that are valued as distinctive elements of the local historic environment.’ The City of Leicester Local Plan says: ‘There are a number of individual buildings and groups of buildings which the city council considers play a key role in defining Leicester’s townscape, for their architectural quality, and/ or as illustrations of the city’s development over time. The city council is keen to protect these buildings, and encourage schemes that retain and improve them. Planning permission will not be granted for development which would have an unacceptably adverse impact on a building, the historic, architectural or amenity value of which warrants protection. ‘The inclusion of a heritage asset on the LIL does not bring any additional form of statutory protection to the asset. It can, however, help to influence the consideration of The Black Boy, Albion Street, Leicester. In 1923 a 19th-century street-corner pub was rebuilt as a smart town- centre bar to an art deco design.The pub closed in 2012 and a developer proposed to demolish. Quoting the new local interest list, Leicester City Council refused consent.This decision was appealed but the appeal was eventually dismissed. (Photo: Phil Taylor) Leicester has an abundance of fineVictorian buildings that it would take a very long time to place on the statutory list.This is the former Borough Isolation Hospital, converted to luxury apartments and now added to the new local interest list. (Photo: Peter Jones) Community matters any planning applications that may affect the significance of that heritage asset, as the LIL will be a material consideration in all current and future planning decisions.’ I did not believe this to be the full picture. In 2011 the European Environmental Impact Assessment Directive superseded the former Demolition Directive as UK law. Among the changes this made was that buildings of ‘significance’ could be made subject to an EIA in respect of proposed changes.