Identify Key Buildings and Priorities for Investment
At the start of a regeneration scheme, you need to identify the buildings best placed to kick-start improvements to the area your scheme covers. And for those buildings, you will need to know which you will be able to deliver and the work needed in the timescales of your project.
Priorities for investment will depend on:
- What buildings you have
- Which building owners are interested
Review the buildings in the target area
Review what you know about the buildings in your regeneration scheme's target area. This understanding will influence how much time you want to invest in each one.
It will also help you:
- Identify the buildings that you ‘really want to happen’
- Guide building owners in the work that is most needed for their buildings
- Help you assess competing applications if you are offering grant funding to building owners
To help you review your buildings, gather the data you have into a spreadsheet. Add information into columns titled ‘condition’ and ‘vacancy’ and then rank them. You may also want to look at other criteria, but condition and vacancy are the fundamental risk factors for historic buildings.
Building condition
The condition of a building impacts:
- Appearance and viability
- Perceptions of neighbouring properties and the area
Search ‘at risk’ registers
You can find condition information about some historic buildings on 'at risk' registers.
For Grade I listed buildings and Grade II listed buildings in London, check Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register. For unlisted buildings or Grade II listed buildings outside London, quite a few local authorities have listed local buildings at risk, so it’s worth contacting your local authority's Building Conservation and Historic Environment Record Officers.
Do your own basic building survey
If your buildings aren’t listed on an at risk register, you can carry out your own basic building at risk survey. Stand outside each building, and look at each element in turn:
- Roof
- Rainwater goods (the gutters and downpipes)
- Doors and windows
- Architectural details, such as balustrades or historic shopfronts
- Walls
- Gates
- Railings
Rate the condition of each element as ‘good’, ‘fair’, ‘poor’ or ‘very bad’.
From this set of marks, rate the overall condition of the building as ‘good’, ‘fair’, ‘poor’ or ‘very bad’.
Alterations that impact character
While you are assessing the condition of a building, you can also log other issues that might help you decide on which buildings to prioritise in your regeneration target area. Look for inappropriate alterations or materials that have a significant impact on the character and appearance of a building and area. These could include:
- UPVC replacement windows
- Modern inappropriate shopfronts
- Painted brickwork
- Modern vinyl signage that is out of scale
Vacancy
Vacancy is another risk factor for historic buildings and one which may influence your choice of priorities.
Local authorities usually have some form of regular vacancy survey, which may be available and allow you to identify your individual buildings and include these in your spreadsheet or table.
If not, or if it seems very out of date, add ‘vacancy’ to your basic building survey when you are walking around. Note whether each building is in ‘full use’ or ‘partial’ use or ‘vacant’.
Making a record of vacancy now will also help you measure change over time if you repeat your survey at a later date. You will need to measure and understand how much change in the area is due to the funding and work carried out for your regeneration scheme.
Other criteria for prioritising buildings
Condition and vacancy give a good understanding of the key risk factors for your buildings. But what about thinking about ways to get the most from the time and funds invested? You could:
- Look for clusters or groups of buildings. Research shows that groups of buildings can have a stronger impact than ‘bitty’ projects or a scattergun approach. Read a case study for Oswestry High Street Heritage Action Zone where this approach delivered great results with a relatively small investment.
- Map the ‘likely impact of work’, for example in terms of the scale of repairs or reinstatement. This influences the extent to which people will notice change and may encourage other building owners to apply for grant funding
- Prioritise street corner buildings and any buildings which impact on ‘gateway views’ into or out of a street
- Consider the individual interest of a building, whether it is designated as a listed building or is on a local list (where one exists)
- Consider the contribution a building makes to the wider townscape, for example, as part of a group of buildings or because it is dominant in the streetscape
- Take into account the length of time a building has been vacant. These will often be high on local people’s radar
- Include buildings or spaces that ‘link’ groups of poor condition buildings together. This can help create a sense of cohesive regeneration in an area
As you build your review, keep good records and make sure that you make them available to other members of your team.
Take a good set of photographs for each property, including a ‘face on’ shot that can be used as a ‘before’ image and can also be used to track change in the area over time. Label your photographs clearly, including with the date.
Concentration of delivery of heritage refurbishment in adjacent buildings maximises the impact, ensuring greater community recognition of works undertaken and thus their on-going support for works.
Estimate costs
A good understanding of the costs involved in repairing, reinstating lost architectural details, or bringing a historic building back into use will inform:
- Decisions about what work is important from the building’s point of view
- The extent of work needed to meet the aims and objectives of your scheme
- Discussions with owners and tenants
- Your prioritisation of projects
Get a realistic understanding of costs
An outline schedule of work with some realistic indicative costings can provide this background detail.
It should be:
- Based on a rapid external visual assessment
- Relatively light touch. Intensive ‘condition surveys’ can be covered as part of the detailed proposals later
- Realistic. Using professional expertise is important
A person or small team with expertise in assessing repairs to historic buildings can support you in understanding what repairs are needed and how much they will cost. It can be an excellent way of getting a quick, but quite detailed understanding of costings for large numbers of buildings. This service is often provided by a practice that can call on a range of expertise. For example an IHBC accredited professional with expertise in identifying repair and maintenance work working alongside a conservation quantity surveyor or building surveyor to provide the costings.
Costs should include estimates of all elements involved, from preliminaries (generally 10%-15% of costs) such as scaffolding, to professional fees (generally 10% to 17% of costs), and of course the repair and improvement works themselves. And remember VAT will be relevant for some owners. It all adds up and can have a major impact on deliverability, expectations, budget and owners.
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How to find the right professional help
When choosing professionals to help you plan and carry out work to an old building, you need people with the appropriate experience.
Gauge and build owner and tenant interest
Building owners’ interest in a heritage-led regeneration project can make or break it.
Only by talking to owners can you develop a robust timeline for your scheme plan. Only with their buy-in can you be confident about how and when you will carry out work to individual buildings.
Remember, the building owner will have different priorities from those of your scheme.
Some owners will be encouraged to come forward when they see the results of change. Others will drop out and not get as far as making a grant application. That is just the way it is.
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How to engage building owners and tenants
Strong relationships with stakeholders, local building owners, businesses and communities are vital to successful regeneration.
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Running a Grant Scheme
How to run a scheme to award funds to private owners of historic buildings for repair, reinstatement or conversion works to enhance a regeneration scheme area.
Lessons learnt - realistic expectations
You can save a great deal of everyone’s time if you provide owners with realistic information at an early stage, and that includes:
- Improvement works needed and what they will cost
- Indication of the disruption involved and approximate timing
- Benefits to their business
- What they will need to do to administer and manage the work
- What support and funding will be available to them
Remember, the building owner will have different priorities from those of your scheme. Owners sometimes drop out of projects after a lot of effort has gone in from all parties. Often this is because at 'discussion stage' everyone has been, although with the best of intentions, using costings that do not represent the actual cost.
These lessons were gathered from Historic England's partners who delivered regeneration projects during the High Streets Heritage Action Zones programme.
Build flexibility into your plans
For planning purposes, it helps to:
- Set project deadlines for dealing with ‘priority’ buildings. Give owners and tenants a deadline for responding and move new projects forwards if you do not hear from them
- Be prepared for change by having your list of priority projects and a long prioritised list of alternatives so that you can adapt quickly if your initial priorities fall by the wayside
- Include your timeline for ‘reviewing’ progress with priority buildings in your overall scheme plan so that you have a strong timetable to work to, and to give you certainty about when to ‘move on’
A key lesson is to stick at trying to engage with the private sector. Our way of ensuring buy-in was to offer a full design, procurement and project management service to owners. This meant they had less to do and could invest knowing that the designs and contractor management work was in place.
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Next: Collaborate with Stakeholders and Partners
Strong relationships with stakeholders, local building owners, businesses and communities are vital to successful regeneration.
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Back to: Toolkit contents list
How to run a heritage led regeneration scheme, with inspiration and lessons learnt from high street schemes and the partners who led them.
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