The short answer
Often not, for a plain re-cover on a house. Class C of the permitted development order deals with roof alterations to a dwellinghouse, and a conservation area does not switch it off. Dormers do lose their permitted right there, flats have none at all, and a listed building needs listed building consent as well. Ask the council whether an Article 4 direction covers your address.
Where the Andover boundary sits
Test Valley Borough Council supplies the line of the Andover conservation area, and planning.data.gov.uk publishes it as entity 44001828. It crosses the town centre, where its Grade II* buildings stand. Listed Grade II* on the National Heritage List in that stretch of town are the Guildhall and The Angel Inn, and the parish church of St Mary holds the same grade.
A boundary on a map is the only safe test, so check your own address on the council's conservation area map rather than guessing from a street name. Andover has spread well past its centre, and the estates people search for as Andover, such as Picket Twenty or Augusta Park, are not automatically inside or outside the line. A house two streets from the centre can fall on either side of it.
The council's appraisal is the place for the designation date and the area covered. For a roof job you do not need either figure. You need three answers: is your address inside the line, is the building listed, and has an Article 4 direction been made for your street. Everything else on this page hangs on those three.
On a survey in the town, we ask for the address first and look at the map before we talk about materials.
Re-roofing a house: why Class C still applies
Planning permission rules for householders sit in the General Permitted Development Order 2015. Class C is the catch-all there for roof alterations to a dwellinghouse, and it is the class that catches re-roofing. Swapping one covering for another on a house therefore normally counts as permitted development, with no application to make.
The limit that matters on an ordinary re-roof is C.1(b), which caps how far new work may rise above the original slope at 0.15 m. New tiles on new battens sit well inside that. Work that leaves the exterior looking unchanged is not development at all under section 55(2)(a) of the 1990 planning Act, which is why a like-for-like swap seldom raises a planning point.
Class C carries no article 2(3) exclusion. A conservation area is article 2(3) land, but that status removes Class B, the dormer class, and leaves Class C untouched. Living inside the boundary does not by itself mean a planning application for a new roof. Building control is a separate question, answered in the second question below, and our survey shows which side of its limits a job falls on before any price is given. A few cracked tiles may sit well under every limit, while a full strip of a large slope calls for a closer look.
Where the conservation area does change the answer
Dormers are the clearest case. Class B does not apply on article 2(3) land, so a new dormer inside the Andover conservation area goes through a planning application. A roof window in a side slope falls under Class C.2, which wants obscure glazing every time; the 1.7 metre rule loosens only the non-opening condition.
Flats are the second case. The order defines a dwellinghouse so that it leaves out any building containing flats, so a roof over flats has no permitted development, and re-covering it may need an application.
The third is an Article 4 direction, which a council can use to switch off particular permitted rights across an area it defines. Where one applies to a street, even routine work such as re-covering can need an application. Test Valley Borough Council's planning officers can say whether one reaches your address, so ask them before ordering materials.
When you write to the council, give the full address and describe exactly what you plan to do to the roof. A vague enquiry brings a vague reply.
Listed buildings inside the line
Many of the older town-centre buildings are listed, and listing brings a second set of rules. A listed house still has Class B and Class C, because the order carries no listed-building exclusion. It still needs listed building consent under section 7 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 for any works that touch its character, and a new roof covering usually does.
Churches follow a different route. The Church of St Mary sits inside the Church of England system: while it is in use, works go through the faculty process rather than listed building consent. Catholic, Methodist, URC and Baptist Union churches have schemes of their own; others take the listed building route.
For a listed or conservation-area roof we survey first and record what is actually there: the slate or tile, the ridge, the pitch, the lead details. That record shows what matching the old work involves on your roof and gives the conservation officer something concrete to read. Our guide to roof repairs on listed buildings covers the consent route, and when roof work needs planning permission sets out the wider rules for any Andover roof.
Where consent is needed, it comes before the scaffold goes up.
