Listed buildings at risk: urgent works and repairs notices

 

Some listed buildings are being left to rot. Nobody seems to care about making repairs. Rain gets in, the roof goes, and ten years later there is nothing worth saving.

The council has two powers for that, and they work very differently from the enforcement powers most people read about. One lets the council walk onto the site, do emergency work itself, and send you the bill. The other is the first step on a road that ends with the council owning your building.

Neither of them gives you a right of appeal. That surprises almost everyone, and it is the single most important thing on this page.

This page covers England. If work has already been done to the building without consent, that is a separate power with its own rules and we cover it on our page about listed building enforcement. If you are at the stage of wanting to alter or repair the building properly, start with listed building consent.

Whilst we are happy to give you some help via this page, it is often easier to consult a professional. If in doubt – STOP – and reach out to us. We are here to help. Contact us here.

 

 

What listed buildings at risk means, and who decides

 

There is no legal category called a listed building at risk. No notice can be served on you because a building has been called that, and nothing follows automatically from the label.

What exists is a register. Historic England publishes the Heritage at Risk Register once a year, and it is a survey rather than a legal document. The version published in November 2025 held 4,891 entries across England, of which 1,460 were buildings and structures. The rest were places of worship, archaeological sites, parks and gardens, battlefields, protected wrecks and whole conservation areas.

Two things about that register catch people out.

• it is not statutory, so being on it gives the council no extra power and puts no duty on you, and coming off it takes nothing away either
• most grade II buildings cannot go on it at all, because outside Greater London the buildings and structures section covers only grade I and grade II* listed buildings and structural scheduled monuments

So a grade II terrace in Leeds falling to bits will never appear on the national register, and that has no bearing whatsoever on what the council can do about it. The powers below apply to every listed building, whatever its grade, and whether or not anyone has ever surveyed it.

The register is still worth looking at, because it shows which buildings Historic England is actively worried about and where its grant money goes. In 2024 to 2025 it put £7.4m into repairs at 123 sites on the register.

 

 

Neglect is not the same as doing work without consent

 

These are two separate systems, and mixing them up wastes a lot of people’s time.

If someone has altered, extended or demolished part of a listed building without consent, that is a criminal offence and the council can serve a listed building enforcement notice with no time limit at all. Our page on listed building enforcement covers that in full: what the notice can make you do, the eleven appeal grounds, the unlimited fine, and why it lands on whoever owns the building rather than whoever did the work.

Letting a listed building fall apart is different. It is not an offence in itself. You cannot be prosecuted for it, and there is no notice that simply orders you to repair your own building. What the council has instead are the two powers below, and both of them end with the council spending money and then coming after you for it.

 

 

Urgent works: the council does the job and sends you the bill

 

This is the power people call an urgent works notice. The name is misleading, and the misunderstanding matters.

The notice does not order you to do anything. It tells you the council is coming to do the work itself. A council may carry out any works that appear to it to be urgently necessary for preserving a listed building in its area, and that expressly includes putting up temporary support or a temporary shelter over the building.

You must be given at least seven days’ notice in writing before the work starts, and that notice has to describe the works proposed. Seven days is the whole of your protection. There is no hearing, no objection form and no appeal.

In Greater London the same power is held by Historic England alongside the borough council, and either can use it. Elsewhere the Secretary of State can authorise Historic England to step in.

In practice the work is defensive rather than restorative: making the roof watertight, propping a wall, closing up openings so the building is not stripped or set alight. The power is aimed at stopping the building getting worse, not at putting it right.

 

 

Only the parts nobody is using

 

There is a hard limit on this power and it is the first thing to check. If the building is occupied, the council can only work on the parts that are not in use.

So a listed building with a shop trading on the ground floor and empty flats above is fair game upstairs and off limits downstairs. A house someone is living in is largely out of reach altogether, however bad the state of the roof.

Parliament has already decided to remove that limit. A change in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 would delete it, letting councils do urgent works to occupied listed buildings as well, and would also register the bill as a local land charge in England so that it shows up on searches against the property.

It is still not in force. As at August 2026 the government has never commenced it, and legislation.gov.uk continues to mark that section as prospective. Be careful with anything you read that describes the occupied-buildings rule as though it had already changed. Until the section is switched on, the empty-parts-only limit stands.

 

 

The bill, and the four things you can say about it

 

Once the work is done, the council gives you a notice asking you to pay what it spent. If the works involved temporary support or shelter, the running cost of keeping the propping or sheeting in place is recoverable too, and the council can send fresh notices for that as time goes on. A prop that stays up for five years is five years of bills.

You have 28 days from being served to make representations to the Secretary of State, and there are exactly four things you are allowed to say.

• some or all of the works were not necessary for preserving the building
• where the works were temporary support or shelter, the temporary arrangements have gone on for an unreasonable length of time
• the amount in the notice is unreasonable
• paying it would cause you hardship

The Secretary of State then decides how far your representations are justified, and must give you the decision, the reasons for it and the amount you actually have to pay. Hardship is a genuine ground and it is worth using, but it is a discretionary one and it is not a back door into arguing that the building did not need the work.

Notice what is missing from that list. You cannot say the works were badly done, or that the council chose an expensive contractor. The nearest you can get is that the total is unreasonable.

 

 

A repairs notice is the serious one

 

A repairs notice is a different animal, and it is the one to be most worried about, because it exists only as a warm-up to losing the building.

It sets out the works the council considers reasonably necessary for the proper preservation of the building, and it has to explain what happens next. It can only be served on a listed building.

Nothing happens on the day it arrives. There is no offence in ignoring it and there is no appeal against it. What it does is start a clock. Two months after service, if the council still thinks reasonable steps are not being taken to preserve the building, it can begin compulsory purchase.

The council can withdraw the notice at any time and must tell you immediately if it does. Getting it withdrawn, by doing the repairs or by agreeing a programme, is the whole game.

There is one catch worth knowing about. A listed building purchase notice is the reverse power that lets an owner force the council to buy a building that has become useless to them. Once a repairs notice has been served on you, you cannot serve one for three months, and if compulsory purchase has started in that window you cannot serve one until the purchase is discontinued. Your own escape route is closed for as long as the council is using its powers against you.

 

 

Compulsory purchase, and the trap of deliberate neglect

 

If it appears to the Secretary of State that reasonable steps are not being taken to preserve a listed building properly, the building can be taken off you. The council can be authorised to buy it compulsorily, or the Secretary of State can buy it himself. Land around the building can go too, where that land is needed for preserving the building or its amenities, for giving access to it, or for controlling or managing it properly.

Historic England has to be consulted first in England, and the Secretary of State has to be satisfied that it is expedient both to make provision for preserving the building and to authorise buying it for that purpose. Demolishing the building once a repairs notice has arrived does not help either, because the bare site can still be bought.

You do get one hearing here, and it is not a planning appeal. Within 28 days of being served with the compulsory purchase notice, anyone with an interest in the building can apply to a magistrates’ court to stay the purchase. If the court is satisfied that reasonable steps have been taken to preserve the building properly, it must make that order. Either side can then appeal to the Crown Court.

Now the trap. Normally you are compensated on the assumption that listed building consent would be granted for altering or extending the building, which keeps the value up. But where the authority is satisfied that the building was deliberately allowed to fall into disrepair in order to justify demolishing it and developing or redeveloping the site, or an adjoining site, it can include a direction for minimum compensation.

If that direction stands, you are paid on the opposite assumptions: that planning permission would never be granted to develop or redevelop the site, and that listed building consent would never be granted for demolition, alteration or extension beyond what is needed to put the building into proper repair and keep it there. That is a very small number. Deliberate neglect as a development strategy is priced accordingly.

The notice has to state that a minimum compensation direction has been included and explain what the phrase means. You then have 28 days to apply to a magistrates’ court for an order that it be left out, and if the court is satisfied the building was not deliberately allowed to fall into disrepair for that purpose, it must make that order. Again there is an onward appeal to the Crown Court.

 

 

Unlisted buildings in a conservation area

 

The urgent works power reaches beyond listed buildings, but only through a door that has to be opened one building at a time.

Where it appears to the Secretary of State that preserving a particular building in a conservation area is important for maintaining the character or appearance of that area, he can direct that the urgent works power applies to it just as it applies to a listed building. Historic England has to be consulted first for a building in England.

The building does not have to be listed for that to happen. But somebody has to go and obtain a direction for the individual building, so this is not something a council reaches for on an ordinary Tuesday. Where an unlisted building in a conservation area is in poor condition, the council’s more usual route is a section 215 notice about the effect it is having on the amenity of the area.

The repairs notice and compulsory purchase powers do not extend this way. Those are for listed buildings only.

 

 

Dangerous structure orders come with a heritage check first

 

Councils have an entirely separate power, under building control law, to deal with a structure that has become dangerous, and that route can end in demolition. Historic buildings have been lost that way.

There is a safeguard. Before a local planning authority takes any step towards a dangerous structure order or notice affecting a listed building, it must consider whether it should use the urgent works power, or the repairs notice and compulsory purchase route, instead.

That is a duty to think about it, not a duty to choose the gentler option. But it is a real duty, and if a listed building near you is about to come down as dangerous, it is a fair question to put to the council in writing.

 

 

Buying or owning listed buildings at risk

 

Both powers follow the building, not the person who let it get into that state.

The urgent works bill goes to whoever owns the building when the council serves its demand. The repairs notice goes to the owner. Compulsory purchase takes the building from whoever holds it at the time. If you buy a wreck cheaply, you buy the position that comes with it.

If you are looking at listed buildings at risk as a project, there are three questions worth asking before you exchange.

• has urgent work already been done to it, and is there an unpaid bill, or propping still standing and running up continuing costs
• has a repairs notice ever been served, and was it withdrawn or is the clock still running
• would anyone say the previous owner let the building decay on purpose, because that history is exactly what a minimum compensation direction feeds on

Ask the council’s conservation officer directly, and get the answer in writing. None of this is reliably picked up by an ordinary conveyancing search at the moment, although the 2023 change described above would put the urgent works bill on the local land charges register once it is commenced.

 

 

There is no appeal against either notice

 

This deserves saying on its own, because people go looking for an appeal form that does not exist.

There is no appeal against an urgent works notice, and no appeal against a repairs notice. Neither of them goes anywhere near the Planning Inspectorate. Our page on planning appeals deals with the appeals that do exist, and none of them fits here.

What you have instead is a short list of specific routes, each with its own hard deadline.

• representations to the Secretary of State within 28 days about the urgent works bill, on the four grounds set out above
• an application to a magistrates’ court within 28 days of the compulsory purchase notice, to stay the purchase on the basis that reasonable steps are being taken
• an application to a magistrates’ court within 28 days against a minimum compensation direction
• an appeal to the Crown Court from either of those court decisions
• judicial review, which asks whether the council acted lawfully, not whether it was right

Those deadlines are not all the same, so work out which one applies to you. The first three each run to 28 days from service and cannot be extended by agreement between you and the council. Judicial review is different: because these powers sit in the planning Acts, the court rules give you six weeks from when the grounds arose rather than the usual three months. Judicial reviews of other kinds have to be brought promptly on top of that deadline, but that extra requirement is expressly switched off for planning ones, so six weeks is the deadline itself. It is still a very short one. The day a notice is served is the day to get advice.

 

 

What it costs you

 

Nothing is payable to the council for being served with either notice. There is no fee to receive one and no fee to respond to one.

There is also no application fee for listed building consent, so if the answer to your problem is a consent to alter or partly demolish the building, that application costs you nothing in council fees. You will still pay someone to prepare the heritage information that goes with it, and if the scheme needs ordinary planning permission as well, that application does carry a fee. Our planning application fees page sets out how charges work generally.

The real money is elsewhere: the cost of the works themselves, the council’s bill for any work it carried out for you, the continuing cost of temporary propping or sheeting left in place, and professional fees.

Money can travel the other way too, and this is badly under-used. A council may contribute towards the cost of repairing or maintaining a listed building in or near its area, and towards an unlisted building in its area that appears to it to be of architectural or historic interest. It can do that by grant or by loan, the loan can be interest free, and it can attach a condition giving the public some access to the building. Be aware that a grant can be clawed back if you sell it, exchange it or grant a lease of 21 years or more within three years of getting the money.

Historic England gives repair grants as well, and its money tends to follow the register.

 

 

What to do if a notice arrives

 

Work out which one it is. An urgent works notice tells you the council is coming in seven days. A repairs notice starts a two month clock towards losing the building. They are not the same emergency.

If it is urgent works, decide quickly whether you would rather do the work yourself. Nothing stops you, and work you organise properly is usually cheaper than work the council commissions and then bills you for with its own costs on top. Speak to the conservation officer that week.

If it is a repairs notice, the schedule of works inside it is the negotiation. Get a building surveyor who works on historic fabric to go through it line by line and tell you what is genuinely necessary for preservation and what is a wish list. Then put a programme to the council in writing, with dates, and ask for the notice to be withdrawn once you are underway.

Either way, photograph everything now, and keep every invoice and every letter. If deliberate neglect is ever raised against you, a paper trail showing you were trying is what answers it.

Finally, be honest with yourself about the building. If you cannot fund the repairs, selling it to someone who can is a far better outcome than a compulsory purchase order with a minimum compensation direction attached.

 

Wales is not covered here. The listed buildings system in Wales has largely been replaced by its own legislation and the position there differs, so take Welsh advice for a Welsh building.

 

See also our guide to the types of planning application.

 

Listed buildings at risk relevant legislation

 

These powers sit in the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. Check the “Changes to Legislation” panel at the top of each page below before relying on the wording, because amendments are sometimes made but not yet written into the text you are reading.

• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, s47: compulsory acquisition of a listed building in need of repair, and the magistrates’ court application to stay it
• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, s48: the repairs notice, the two month wait before compulsory purchase, and the block on serving a listed building purchase notice
• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, s49: compensation on compulsory acquisition, assessed on the assumption that consent would be granted
• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, s50: minimum compensation where a building has been deliberately left derelict
• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, s54: urgent works to preserve listed buildings, the seven days written notice, and the limit to parts not in use
• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, s55: recovery of the expenses of urgent works, and the four grounds of representation to the Secretary of State
• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, s56: the duty to consider these powers before taking dangerous structure action on a listed building
• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, s57: council grants and loans towards repair and maintenance
• Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, s76: urgent works extended by direction of the Secretary of State to a building in a conservation area
• Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, s104: would remove the limit to parts not in use and make the urgent works bill a local land charge in England, prospective and not in force as at August 2026

Other Planning Application Sections

 

Listed buildings at risk Page Updated: 21st August 2026