Campaigning for outstanding buildings

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Casework

Casework is at the heart of what C20 is all about. We campaign to save irreplaceable buildings we love and think are outstanding.

Read about our latest Casework news here.

Below are more reflective articles by our Caseworkers.

Our expertise is recognised by our official role in the planning process. The Twentieth Century Society has to be consulted about any application for listed building consent involving demolition, anywhere in England. Although we don’t have the same legal role in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we are often asked to give our views on the future of important buildings of our period there.

We get to hear about threated buildings by lots of other routes too, and our members and supporters are always alert to threats and quick to let us know about them. Most societies like ours (such as the Victorian Society or the Ancient Monuments Society) can reckon on almost all the buildings of their period that should be listed already being safely included on the National Heritage List for England, which is run by Historic England. That’s not the case for us, and putting buildings forward for listing is a big part of what we do, and often a crucial early step in a campaign. We’ve called for much wider recognition for groups of C20 buildings, by designation of conservation areas, but generally our resources mean that we can only lend support to individual buildings if they are already listed, or we think they deserve to be.

Most churches in England and Wales do not need to apply for listed building consent and changes are managed through a separate system. C20 Society has to be consulted on these too, and has a specialist caseworker who does this.

We encourage architects, developers and owners to consult with us before they put in planning applications, so that we can explain why we think a building is important and try to help them find solutions which meet their needs and preserve what’s special about it. Sometimes that’s not possible and we end up lobbying hard against the granting of permission. The caseworkers present cases at the monthly meeting of our expert Casework Committee, who guide them and can also advise on lobbying press, working with local groups and coming up with positive suggestions for alternative design approaches, or more radical lateral ideas.

In the last resort, if an application we’ve fought against gets permission, we can sometimes reverse the decision at a public inquiry or consistory court hearing, chaired by a planning inspector, or lawyer, who will make a recommendation to the Secretary of State. We have to think very carefully about whether to do this as it is very time consuming and can be expensive.

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The K8 Kiosk – Last of the Great Red Boxes

The plight of the red telephone box has long been a cause for the Society (see Gavin Stamp’s article). From time to time, the Society continues the battle, fighting against kiosk de-listing requests and highlighting the continuing and varied threat...

Sunderland Synagogue

Marcus Kenneth Glass’s Sunderland Synagogue of 1928 is under indirect threat from owners who want to re-develop the site. This is particularly worrying because it is the last surviving synagogue by this prolific and largely unsung architect. Having...

Malvern Sports Dome

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Demolition stayed for Cambridge Bunker

We are pleased to be able to report that this cold war structure is currently being considered for use as a safe storage facility. This is an obvious use for this tough concrete structure. Only minor changes will be needed to adapt it: a larger openi...

Listing for Lloyds?

The Society is setting up a group to consider how best to assess which buildings of the 1970s should be listed. The thirty year rule means that all buildings that started on site up to 1976 are now eligible for Grade II listing, and by the time our r...

Geoffrey Chaucer School faces demolition

Geoffrey Chaucer School in Southwark opened in 1958. A brand new secondary school for girls designed by Chamberlin, Powell & Bon, Two Saints, as it was originally known, was one of the more celebrated architectural projects of that year. The prac...

Commonwealth Institute – Government proposes delisting

In my 2005 director’s report, I covered Tessa Jowell’s decision not to delist the Commonwealth Institute—this was certainly good news, but we knew then that this would not be the end of the story and that sadly her decision did not mean that th...

Casework Report

National Sports Centre Good news first; the Society can announce that there has been an about turn in the plan for the National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace which for some years now has been under intense pressure and threat of demolition. Both th...

St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir School

Following the planned demolition of the New Change Buildings the adjacent St Paul’s Cathedral Choir School is now also under threat. This comes as an ironic twist to the loud works involved in tearing down and replacing the large building by Victor...

Milton Court

Since April there have been concrete plans to knock down this first phase of the Barbican and replace it with a tower that is even bigger than Citypoint. A Certificate of Immunity is being processed by English Heritage to these ends. Post-war listin...