More support for city centre heritage properties

More than £1.75m is being made available to support the work protecting heritage properties in Preston at risk from vandalism and other antisocial behaviour.

The city council launched an Empty Properties Taskforce in February 2025, established to oversee and co-ordinate multi-agency action to secure and preserve a number of properties in need of help.

Working to enforce legislative powers and statutory action available to the council - along with regular liaison with private landlords, Preserving Preston’s Heritage Group, the police and the local fire service - the taskforce’s activity has resulted in positive outcomes at some key sites.

Ongoing enforcement action has seen urgent work at St Joseph’s Orphanage, where collaboration with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has been necessary.

Caption: Exterior St Josephs Orphanage 2 Credit Buttress Architects

Urgent repairs have also been made to The Old Dog Inn, College House – suffragette Edith Rigby’s house - and the Harris Institute.

It has been necessary to demolish properties, including Lanson House and the Beat Street Café.

Councillor Valerie Wise, cabinet member for community wealth building and city regeneration and the chairperson of the taskforce, said: “It is important that we lead by example and will be looking to make some improvements to key heritage assets in our ownership that have been hindered by financial constraints in recent years.

“We have made some excellent progress over the past 12 months driven by city-wide collaboration, but there is still a lot of work to do. We encourage the public to report any unusual, suspicious or anti-social behaviour around empty buildings.”

Councillor Amber Afzal, cabinet member for planning and regulation, who is also an active member of the taskforce, added: “Alongside regular checks and inspections by our housing standards team, planning enforcement and building control, it is important that we continue to use our legislative rights to hold those less scrupulous landlords and property owners to account, to improve and bring back into use empty heritage assets for the benefit of the city and for future generations.”

To support the work being undertaken by the Empty Properties Taskforce, the council’s cabinet has approved further funding.

The package includes £100,000 for a feasibility study on council-owned heritage assets - to establish options and costs for safeguarding and/or development.

The money will also fund Housing Standards Officers and Building Surveyor posts – to boost housing standards work and to be a further resource to support the council’s operational and investment property portfolios.

Conservation Area Match Funding will see the creation of a grants pot to help those facing difficulty affording improvements to homes in conservation areas due to the restrictive costs.

And £380,000 will be allocated to the redevelopment of Avenham Park and Haslam Park Lodges –to protect and bring them back into use.

The council is also spending £1.27m to protect a number of heritage buildings that it owns on on Lancaster Road that are at risk of deterioration.

These measures will also be supported by additional resources for the local authority’s community safety teams to tackle anti-social behaviour, more and improved city centre CCTV, lighting and street safety measures.