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Listing Buildings

Two different principles are at play here. One hates to see an order made about other people's property without their knowing about it in the first place, but there is always a risk, given the length of time that the process takes, that if a building owner is told that an application to list a particular property is being made, they might knock the building down before the decision is taken. I believe that that happened in a case relating to Kensington town hall a little while ago. One of the real problems that we face is that there is no stop notice arrangement, whereby once an application has been made, it protects the building from demolition while the process is under way. Perhaps my right hon. Friend might think about providing in her Bill that once an application is made, no action can be taken to knock a building down until the process is completed.