Heritage Statement for a teaching canopy beside a Grade II* hall and a Gibberd chapel.

A heritage statement the council would not validate.

The college wanted a freestanding canopy over an area of hardstanding where bricklaying and other building trades are taught outdoors, so that classes could carry on in bad weather. It is a steel frame with a fabric roof, roughly 15m by 18m.

The planning application had already been submitted, with a short heritage statement from the canopy supplier. The council would not accept it. The planning officer wrote that the statement was not sufficient to meet the validation requirements, that it did not assess the impact on the heritage assets, and that an appropriate professional should be sought to revise it.

The difficulty for the college was time and proportion. A modest teaching shelter was held up because it stood within the grounds of a Grade II* house and about 50m from a listed chapel. Under s.66(1) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 the council has to pay special regard to the desirability of preserving the setting of a listed building, and it could not do that without a proper account of what the setting was.

Showing how the estate divides.

Before quoting we reviewed the history of the site and told the college which assets the statement would need to address: the Hall and the former chapel. We then set out the development of the estate from the tithe map of 1839 and Ordnance Survey maps from the edition published in 1851 to that of 1963, with an aerial photograph of 2008.

The maps and photographs showed that the estate now reads in two parts. The listed buildings stand to the north. The modern college stands to the south, separated from them by rising ground and mature trees. The canopy site is in the southern part, enclosed on two sides by larger college buildings.

We recorded the views between the site and the Hall, the chapel and a pair of brick gate piers that may be listed by virtue of standing within the Hall’s curtilage, and we compared the proposal with the much larger extension to the adjoining college building that the council had approved in 2021.

The Heritage Statement.

Our Heritage Statement was issued in June 2022, a little over two weeks after the college first contacted us. It described the Hall and the chapel and their significance, set out the map regression, illustrated the views, and assessed the canopy against s.66(1) and the National Planning Policy Framework then in force. It concluded that the canopy would preserve the setting of both listed buildings and cause no harm to their significance.

Validated, accepted and approved.

The council’s Conservation Officer wrote that the new statement “satisfactorily sets out the significance of the affected heritage assets and the impact of the development”. The planning officer’s report records that the Conservation Officer confirmed the canopy would not cause any harm to the listed buildings.

Planning permission was granted in June 2022, eighteen days after the statement was issued. The Conservation Officer did have reservations about the canopy’s utilitarian appearance, and for that reason the permission runs for five years, to June 2027.