GivEnergy Repairs & Support in Nottingham

The council’s page names 33 areas and gives a designation date for each. The dates run from July 1969 to 3 June 2020, so this is a list that has been added to. Read it as the position in August 2026, not a permanent figure.

The council’s open Conservation Areas dataset holds 32 polygons. Strelley appears on the webpage list but not in the layer, and the area the page calls Sutton Passey is named Middleton Boulevard in the data. Two council sources, two answers.

Castle, Clifton Village, Lace Market and Old Market Square were designated in July 1969. (Old) Sneinton followed in 1975, New Lenton on 15 January 1976, Old Lenton in 1978, Arboretum and Canal in February 1983. The two most recent are Bulwell, 20 September 2016, and Old Meadows, 3 June 2020.

Basford Hall, Canning Circus, Elm Avenue-Corporation Oaks, Forest Grove, Gamble Street-Alfreton Road, Hine Hall, Mapperley Hospital, Mapperley Park and Alexandra Park, Sherwood Rise, Sneinton Market, Star Buildings, Station, Strelley and the area the page calls Sutton Passey.

Conservation area status is a current legal designation. It applies to the property as it stands today, whatever the house was built from and whatever has been done since. We settle the question from both council sources before quoting anything that goes on a roof or an outside wall.

Its own first page describes it as “informal guidance in support of existing Conservation Area Appraisals, The Local Plan and the Design Quality Framework”. The council’s Heritage & Urban Design Team published it in autumn 2025; the PDF is dated 27 November 2025. It is not an adopted SPD.

On planning permission the section says it is “Required for buildings of high significance and roof slopes of high visibility” and “Not required for buildings of low significance or roof slopes of low visibility”. Significance and visibility are what it turns on.

Its design principle is that “Panels should be arranged in a neat, symmetrical, and compact formation that does not clutter the overall appearance of the building”. That is a real constraint on a retrofit, where panels get added in the order the roof allows rather than the order that looks tidy.

The same page asks you to “Use indented panels or panels appropriate to the colour of the roof material”. Read with the note’s roofing section, that is about how a panel reads against blue slate or red clay, not about its output.

For listed buildings the section states that “Listed Building Consent is required”, and gives preferred locations as “rear slopes, inner valleys, flat roofs with parapets, or outbuildings”. Worth knowing before a panel is moved during a repair.

The section is illustrated with a brick building carrying roof-mounted panels, captioned “Symetrical and organised layout of solar panels within the Old Sneinton Conservation Area”, the council’s spelling. LABELLED INFERENCE: it illustrates its own principle with a photograph it says was taken in a Nottingham conservation area. It does not say that installation was approved.

The national threshold is the ENA Engineering Recommendation G98 limit of 16 A per phase: 3.68 kW single-phase, 11.04 kW three-phase. Above that, the installation falls under G99, even if export is limited. Where there is an inverter, the rating counted is its continuous rating, not the panel total.

A battery bolted onto a system notified years ago can move it across the threshold it was approved under, and your distribution network operator decides where the notification goes. We confirm both from the address before recommending hardware. Export application support →

Section 9, “Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing”, notes that “External cable and piping runs can contribute or harm the special character of a conservation area”, and states that “New external runs or replacements will require permission in conservation areas”. That covers the cable between an inverter and a battery.

Its design principle is that runs “must be minimal and neutral in their impact and visibility, such as working with existing fenestration or hidden by architectural features”. Its photograph is captioned “Cable runs hidden via a return on the rear elevation of a listed building.”

The note asks for replacements of existing runs to be made “on a like-for-like basis, unless they can be deemed harmful”. Re-using an existing route when an isolator or a battery cable is replaced is a shorter conversation than cutting a new one.

Section 13 says Nottingham “is generally characterised by a mix of roof materials, such as blue slate, red clay tiles and red clay pantiles”. Slate-effect tiles “may be permissible on roofs of low-medium significance”, so a roof re-covered in a substitute is a different starting point from an original slate one.

Section 2 describes Nottingham’s historic bricks as “generally defined by a warm red-orange colour, typical of the clays from the local Trent Valley region”. Section 10 asks for a Natural Hydraulic Lime 3.5 mortar, one part NHL to three of 0-4 mm sharp sand, kept damp five to seven days, no cement additives.

Section 16 lists Bulwell and “White” Mansfield among the residential stones, and adds that “Bulwell and Mansfield stones are now exhausted; either use reclaimed, or else as an alternative the Steetley variety of Cadeby Magnesian Limestone”. A wall you cannot patch to match is one to drill once.

Section 7 says external insulation “may be acceptable on elevations of low significance or visibility, such as rear or side walls not visible from public viewpoints”, and that planning permission is required. Worth raising before an All-in-One is fixed to a wall that is in next year’s retrofit plan.

It replaced the 2007 appraisal and is the most recent conservation area appraisal the council lists. Its description of the estate rests on a survey carried out in July and August 2020: red brick for load-bearing walls, buff and blue brick as detailing, stone to openings, a steeply pitched gabled roof form predominating.

It states that permitted development rights “are reduced in Conservation Areas, affording greater control over (amongst other works) extensions, outbuildings, ... cladding, satellite dishes and solar panels”, and warns that they “are a matter of some complexity and advice should be taken”.

Appendix 1 says permitted development rights “also do not apply to properties in multiple occupation, including flats”. LABELLED CAVEAT: that is a general planning summary, over-simplified for solar, whose rules sit separately in the GPDO 2015, Schedule 2, Part 14, Class A. The SPD’s own advice stands: take advice for your property.

The SPD lists one only as an intention. Under Priority 6, on page 87, it says “it is the ambition of this plan that Article 4 Directions will be put in place” for works shown to be harming the area. The Park is not among the directions the council publishes.

The council publishes one direction covering houses in multiple occupation, plus Devonshire Promenade, Waterloo Promenade, Wellington Terrace, Strelley Village, Sneinton and Foxhall Road. It describes those six as “put in place on several specific properties, mostly within conservation areas”, restricting “minor building work, such as small extensions, outbuildings, and changes to windows and doors”.

Made under Article 4(3)(b) of the 1977 General Development Order and dated 27 January 1988, it was approved by the Secretary of State on 15 July 1988 “subject to the modifications shown in red ink thereon”, which the council’s greyscale scan cannot show. Approval beat its own 27 July 1988 expiry, so it took permanent effect. It names 2 to 22 Devonshire Promenade and 287 and 289 Derby Road.

Made under Article 4(1) of the same order and sealed on 13 January 1988, it covers 16 properties: the odd numbers 65 to 95 Foxhall Road, Forest Fields. Its schedule withdraws three permitted development rights. Its “Effective from” line is blank, so the in-force date of 13 April 1988 comes from the covering memo.

The HMO direction is the one whose plan is edged to the “Nottingham City Boundary”, in force since 11 March 2012. It removes a change-of-use right rather than a building right, so it is not what governs a panel or a battery. Inside a conservation area, solar permitted development is already reduced.