How many, and which grades
The national planning dataset, which takes its listed-building records from Historic England, holds 1,569 entries inside the Liverpool City Council boundary. Each record is one list entry; an entry can be a single house, a whole terrace, a church or a dock wall, so the count is of entries, not of homes.
| Grade | Records | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Grade I | 30 | 1.9% |
| Grade II* | 104 | 6.6% |
| Grade II | 1,394 | 88.8% |
| No grade in the dataset | 41 | 2.6% |
On the city map the records concentrate in the centre and along the waterfront, with clusters in the conservation areas to the south and in the old villages. Many sit inside the 36 conservation areas, but not all: a listed building outside any conservation area is still outside Class G.
Why Class G does not apply
Paragraph G.2(i) of Class G says development is not permitted if the house or block of flats is a listed building, and that includes buildings and land within its grounds. So an outdoor unit in the yard of a listed terrace is caught just as much as one on its wall. The route instead is a planning application to Liverpool City Council.
On top of that, the council's guidance says listed building consent is needed for works that alter a listed building in a way that affects its character as a building of special architectural or historic interest, and that this applies to internal as well as external works. It also says consent may be needed for works to separate buildings within the grounds. For a heat pump, that can bring in the outdoor unit, pipe runs through walls, a new cylinder cupboard and radiator changes.
Working out what consent you need
- Confirm the listing on the National Heritage List for England, and read the list entry: it describes what made the building special.
- Ask the installer for a design that shows the outdoor unit, the pipe route, the cylinder and any radiator changes.
- Contact the council before applying. Its listed buildings page asks anyone unsure to get in touch before starting work.
- Apply for planning permission and, where the work affects character, listed building consent, with the plans and documents in the council's validation guidance.
- Do not start work until both are granted. The council's page is clear that the correct consent must be in place first.
What usually helps an application
Officers judge each case, so there is no formula. The facts that tend to matter are the ones a listing protects: the outdoor unit kept out of principal views, existing openings reused for pipework rather than new holes cut through historic fabric, and internal changes kept reversible where possible. The MCS 020 a) sound figures are still useful, because the neighbours' amenity is part of the planning decision even though Class G no longer applies.
If the building is in a conservation area too
Many listed buildings in the city also sit inside one of the 36 conservation areas. That does not add a second permission: the planning application covers the heat pump, and listed building consent covers the effect on the building. But the conservation area's character is part of what the council weighs, so a position at the back, away from the road, is still the sensible starting point, as it would be under Class G.
The World Heritage Site that was
Many of the city's most important listed buildings stood within the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2004. UNESCO removed it from the World Heritage List on 21 July 2021. The buildings' listing is a separate, national designation and is unaffected, so the listed-building rule above still applies to every one of them.