Listed building – Permission to demolish except for facades and chimney breasts – Whether subsequent removal of chimney breasts part of demolition of whether constituting alteration under section 27 of Listed Buildings Act 1990 for compensation purposes – House of Lords restoring decision of Lands Tribunal
On November 2 1989 the appellants became owners of a site on the corner of Old Bond Street and Piccadilly on which stood a listed building. On July 6 1988 conditional planning consent and conditional listed building consent for the ‘demolition of all except the facades, chimney breasts and stacks of the building’ had been granted to the appellant’s predecessor in title by the respondents. The appellants wished to extend the floorarea for commercial purposes. Demolition began in March 1990 and by June the building consisted only of the facades, chimney breasts and chimney stacks supported by temporary steelwork. The appellants then applied to the respondents for listed building consent for the removal of the chimney breasts and appealed against the deemed refusal to the Secretary of State whose inspector dismissed the appeal. A dispute then arose as to whether the appellants were entitled to compensation for the refusal of listed building consent for the removal of the internal chimney breasts. They referred their claim to the Lands Tribunal who decided in the appellant’s favour on a preliminary issue as to whether the works constituted alterations to a listed building under section 27(1)(a) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (the Listed Buildings Act 1990) and agreed the relevant date for assessment of the amount of compensation. The respondent appealed contending that the proposed operation involving the chimney breasts amounted to no more than their demolition as part of a building, and that the work did not involve an alteration to a building or part thereof within the meaning of section 27. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal ( [1995] 1 PLR 72]) and the appellant appealed.
Held The appeal was allowed and the decision of the Lands Tribunal ([1994] 1 EGLR 214]) was restored.
1. It was possible to make sense of the expression ‘listed building’ without reading the word’ building’ (as defined in section 336 (1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, the principal Act, and applied to the Listed Buildings Act 1990 by section 91(2) of that Act ) as including any part of a listed building. For the purposes of section 27 of the Listed Buildings Act 1990 the whole of the building listed rather than a part of it had to be considered in deciding whether the work amounted to ‘alteration of a listed building’.
2. The expression ‘listed building’ in the context of Part I of the Principal Act meant a building, or any part of a building, which was for the time being included in the list. Accordingly demolition of a part only of what was in the list as a listed building did not constitute demolition for the purposes of Part I of the Act unless the works to be carried out to the listed building as a whole were so substantial as to amount to a clearing of the whole site for redevelopment.
3. The question what constitutes the demolition of the whole building was a question of fact and degree to be decided on the facts of each case.
John Cherryman QC and David Holgate (instructed by Freshfields) appeared for the appellants; Michael Barnes QC and Viscount Dilhorne (instructed by the solicitor to the Westminster City Council) appeared for the respondent council.
