Our historic buildings are already here. So why aren’t we reusing them?

The new government has put housing at the top of the national agenda, with a promise of the biggest council housebuilding drive since the post-war period.

At the same time, in Mid Wales and the Marches, we are watching wonderful, structurally sound and historically significant buildings stand empty, deteriorating month by month, while political attention gravitates towards green belt release and headline-grabbing new-build numbers.

This is not a story about conservation romanticism getting in the way of progress. It is the opposite.

Every empty rectory, mill, chapel, hall and farmhouse in our region is a potential home, business, or several of both, sitting unused while we debate where to build new ones. The commercial and planning barriers that keep them empty are not inevitable. They are the product of policy choices that can be changed.

If we do not act, we will not simply lose buildings. We will lose the physical evidence of how our communities were built, who lived in them and what they valued. We will lose it in a region where there is little large-scale development pressure to replace what falls down with anything at all.

Regeneration economics that just about work in Manchester, Bristol or Cardiff do not translate to Kerry, Knighton, Ludlow or Much Wenlock.

Away from the main cities:

Sale values are low relative to renovation costs.** A finished, beautifully restored listed farmhouse or hall may still sell for less than the cost of the work needed to get it there. The viability gap is structural, not a matter of a developer trying harder.

Skilled labour is scarce and has to travel. Lime plasterers, stonemasons and joiners trained in traditional techniques are thin on the ground in rural Powys, Shropshire and Herefordshire. Every mile they travel is a cost the scheme has to absorb.

There are no “next ten identical units” over which to spread the risk.** Most of our listed buildings are unique, one-off and individually mortgaged propositions. Every unknown, from hidden timber decay and unrecorded alterations to contaminated land and asbestos, lands on a single project’s bottom line.

Mainstream development finance is not built for this. Lenders and investors who understand new-build housing typically do not understand, or price for, the risk profile of historic building reuse.

The result is that buildings which might be considered a quick win in an urban regeneration strategy are instead left to whichever private buyer takes them on, often without the capital, expertise or fiscal support needed to see the project through.

None of the following requires new discoveries. They require political will.

VAT. New-build construction is zero-rated. Repair and renovation of an existing listed building is standard-rated at 20%.

This is one of the most perverse incentives in the system. It is cheaper, in VAT terms, to demolish and rebuild than to repair and reuse.

The zero rate on approved alterations to listed buildings was withdrawn in 2012 and has never been reinstated. The Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme, which mitigated exactly this problem for churches, closed to new applications on 31 March 2026.

A House of Commons select committee report on protecting built heritage, published in July 2026, has since recommended reducing or removing VAT on eligible restoration works, or introducing a rebate scheme, precisely because the current system actively discourages reuse.

We support that recommendation and call for it to be extended beyond places of worship to listed buildings generally.

Capital Gains Tax. Owners who take on the risk, cost and years of effort involved in restoring a listed building and then sell should not face the same CGT treatment as someone flipping an unmodified asset. Targeted relief tied to demonstrable conservation-standard work would reward exactly the behaviour we want to encourage.

Stamp Duty Land Tax. A buyer taking on a derelict or semi-derelict listed building is not buying a functioning home. They are buying a liability with the potential to become a home, at their own risk and expense. SDLT calculated on the notional value of the finished building punishes the wrong end of the transaction.

Grant support for viability gaps. Where full commercial viability genuinely cannot be reached, even with fiscal relief, targeted capital grants of the kind Cadw, the Architectural Heritage Fund and Heritage Fund already administer in smaller ways need to be scaled up and made more accessible to individual owners and small practices, not just large heritage bodies.

Taken together, these measures do not require the public purse to fund a new-build subsidy. They remove active disincentives to doing the thing everyone says they want: bringing existing buildings back into use, avoiding unnecessary development on the green belt and putting roofs over heads in communities that already exist.

Fiscal reform will not help if the wrong people are buying the wrong buildings for the wrong reasons, and that is happening constantly.

We see the same pattern again and again:

1. A listed building is put on the market “cheap” relative to its size or setting because it is derelict, subdivided or both.

2. A buyer is drawn in by the price and the romance, without professional advice on what listing actually means for that specific building.

3. They are told, informally or by a well-meaning but under-informed third party, that “only the front” or “only the original part” is listed. This is almost never true. Listing protects the whole building, inside and out, above and below ground, and critically, any object or structure fixed to it or within its curtilage that formed part of the land before 1 July 1948. That can include later extensions, internal partitions, outbuildings, garden walls, gate piers and lodges, unless specifically excluded in the list description.

4. They complete the purchase before understanding the implications. Only then do they discover that material alterations may need Listed Building Consent, that the scope of sympathetic repair is far wider and more costly than they assumed, and that the finance and insurance markets treat their new asset very differently from an ordinary house.

Dolforgan Hall in Kerry, Powys, which is going to auction with a guide price of £150,000, is a clear illustration of both sides of this manifesto.

It is a Grade II* listed Regency country house of around 14,500 sq ft, with its own separately listed coach house and gate lodges. It is currently divided into six uninhabitable apartments requiring complete renovation.

The guide price makes it look like a bargain. It is not a bargain for anyone who buys it without understanding that Grade II* status brings a higher bar for consent, that associated structures on the site are independently protected and that the true cost of bringing it back to life will very likely be several times the purchase price. Current VAT, CGT and SDLT treatment does little to soften that cost.

Handled with proper advice and a realistic view of viability, it is exactly the kind of building this manifesto is written for. Handled without it, it risks becoming another cautionary tale and potentially another building that stalls half-restored.

From government

Westminster, Historic England, the Welsh Government and Cadw need to work together across the border to:

• Reinstate meaningful VAT relief for the repair, renovation and approved alteration of listed buildings, following the direction already recommended by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.
• Introduce targeted Capital Gains Tax relief for owners who complete conservation-standard restoration of listed buildings.
• Reform Stamp Duty treatment of derelict and substantially unmodernised listed buildings to reflect their condition at purchase, not their potential.
• Expand and simplify access to capital grant funding for viability gaps in rural heritage-led regeneration, with a route specifically designed for individual owners and small practices, not just institutional applicants.
• Recognise heritage-led rural regeneration explicitly within the national housing strategy, alongside rather than instead of green belt release and new-build targets, with a rural weighting that reflects the genuinely different economics outside the main cities.

From estate agents, auctioneers and conveyancers

• Full, upfront disclosure of listing status and its practical implications at the point of marketing, not after an offer is accepted.
• An end to the “only the front is listed” myth, whether through carelessness or convenience.

From our own profession

• Pre-purchase heritage due diligence should be normalised, not exceptional. Buyers need a proportionate condition and consent survey before exchange, not after completion.
• We will continue to make that advice available early and plainly, before a client’s options have narrowed to “spend more than you planned” or “watch it fall down”.

This manifesto is not only a set of demands of others. As a conservation practice based in this region, we commit to:

• Advising every prospective purchaser of a listed building, wherever we are asked, on the true scope of what listing protects, not just the parts visible from the road.
• Making the commercial case for heritage-led regeneration as clearly to funders and lenders as we make the conservation case to planners.
• Working with local authorities, Cadw, Historic England and community groups to identify at-risk buildings in our area before they reach crisis point, not after.
• Publishing what we learn, including costs, consents and outcomes, so that the next owner and the next policymaker have better information than the last.

There is no shortage of buildings in Mid Wales and the Marches with the potential to become homes, workspaces and community assets again.

What is missing is a commercial and fiscal case strong enough to bring that potential forward, together with honest advice at the point of sale to stop good intentions turning into unfunded liabilities.

Fix the economics. Fix the information gap.

The buildings are already here, and so are the communities who want to keep them.