A Future for Historic Buildings

A conversation with Stephanie Weeks, Partner in Carter Jonas’s Planning and Development team in Oxford, confirms from the outset that planning for historic buildings can be extremely rewarding.

However, finding future use for a redundant building can be as challenging as it is rewarding, both in planning and economic terms.

Here, Stephanie discusses how the outlook for heritage buildings is changing following the recently published NPPF and how owners, designers and decision makers should respond to the changing policy agenda.

What concerns you most when an historic building needs a new use?

“The priority is always to bring a redundant or underused building into practical use and secure its future. These are often beautiful buildings, but they can be difficult and expensive. The longer a building has been left empty, the more difficult and more costly it becomes.

“It is paramount that heritage assets are protected. But preservation and change are two very different things. Carefully considered change can secure a building’s future in a way that preservation cannot and can help people appreciate its interest and beauty in a new way.”

Stephanie says that securing a building’s future cannot be inferred from its external appearance or original purpose. Buildings which may appear suited to one use from the outside may reveal either limitations or opportunities when the interior is revealed.

“You stand there with the architect, the owner and the design team and ask: who could actually use these rooms? What would have to change to make them work? The perspective from the inside can be very different from the perspective from the outside. And there is no reliable way to tell from the type of building how easy it will be to convert; each presents its own challenges.”

How does the new NPPF affect that search for a workable future?

Policy HE4(1)(a) of the August 2026 NPPF requires development proposals affecting the significance of heritage assets to maintain or secure a use consistent with their conservation. Policy HE6(4) identifies the long-term reuse of a vacant or underused listed building as a potential important public benefit when harm to a designated heritage asset is weighed against a proposal’s benefits. However, the explicit reference to securing an asset’s ‘optimum viable use’ in paragraph 215 of the December 2024 NPPF has been removed.

“That phrase gave us a useful way to work through the options,” Stephanie says. “Under the previous NPPF, you could ask what uses had been considered, why some had been discounted, which would cause the least harm and whether the changes needed for the preferred use were justified by securing the building’s future."

“The new policy still recognises that buildings need a use. What I am concerned about is whether the route to that use will be less clear for applicants and decision makers. We have not yet had enough decisions under the new wording to know how it will be applied.”

The NPPF also requires an assessment of the asset’s significance and the proposal’s effect on it. For a designated heritage asset, any harm must have clear and convincing justification and be considered under the relevant policy tests. For a non-designated asset, policy HE7 distinguishes between harm and substantial harm or total loss. Harm must be weighed against the benefits of the proposal through a balanced judgement.

Does a focus on heritage ever make it harder to save a building?

“It can,” says Stephanie, “if the discussion stops at what cannot be changed. With a building in poor condition, the immediate task may be to make it safe and watertight. But then you have to work out who might occupy it and what changes are required to make this successful. The fire safety, access and services required today all have substantial practical implications and if it becomes too difficult for a potential occupier to make the space work, they may decide not to proceed.

“Decision makers are right to examine harm carefully. But if they cannot support a scheme as proposed, it is worth asking whether there are elements that can be supported and what changes might make it acceptable. If a project falls away, we do not necessarily know when someone else will have the appetite or resources to start again and that building could be subject to more degradation or lost.”

The economics are only part of the picture: Stephanie wants the case for change to be tested against the qualities that make a building significant, including its interior and setting, not just the façade that is most visible to the public.

Where can the planning team make the greatest difference?

“Early feasibility work is particularly rewarding. Sometimes a client comes with a use in mind, or sometimes they will say, ‘I’ve got this building...what can I do with it?’. Then we can walk it together, consider its condition, the client’s priorities and what might be feasible in economic and planning terms. I love being involved at that stage because you can help shape the long-term future for a unique building.”

Heritage can shape new development around an asset too. On one Oxford project, the team was required to plan several houses in the grounds of historic villas. While that might initially sound like a modern intrusion on a historic layout, the eventual design approach responded to long-established plot boundaries, retained garden walls and allowed routes through the site.

“The history was present in the layout, even where there was no single building to preserve. Once we recognised that, the proposed new buildings became smaller and better related to the plots and existing non-designated heritage assets. The scheme was more interesting for having taken the time to understand the place.”

At Carter Jonas, Stephanie works alongside colleagues in Heritage Building Consultancy whose expertise includes condition surveys, building pathology, conservation repairs, cost advice and project delivery. Their work at Worcester College, for example, has combined repairs with services and statutory upgrades across buildings that remain in active use. That practical knowledge can inform a planning strategy long before an application is submitted and supports a scheme through the planning, listed building consent and the construction phase.

“A planning solution has to be capable of being built and used,” Stephanie says. “You need to understand the building itself, the cost of looking after it and the effect of any proposed change. When you bring those perspectives together, you have a much better chance of finding the right answer.”

For Stephanie, that search is what makes heritage work compelling: “You can walk into a building and discover something wonderful that was not apparent from outside. Then the question shifts from how to preserve an attractive-looking building to how best to give it a new lease of life which can maintain its function for years to come.”