Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index In the United Kingdom the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 requires the government to create lists of buildings that are to be specially protected as part of the national heritage. Buildings on these lists are referred to as listed buildings. There are three types of listed status (in descending order of 'importance' and difficulty to obtain planning permission): Grade I Grade II* Grade II According to the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, which oversees listed building applications and enforcement, there are, as of May 2003, approximately 442,000 listings in place, of which 418,000 (94.5%) are Grade II, 18,000 (4.1%) are Grade II*, and 6,000 (1.4%) are Grade I. There are estimated to be about 500,000 actual buildings listed, as listing entries can apply to more than one building. Table of contents 1 Famous listed buildings 2 External links 3 See also Famous listed buildings Grade I: British Museum Reading Room Buckingham Palace Windsor Castle Royal Festival Hall - first post-war building to be listed Grade I etc. Grade II: BT Tower and scads more famous buildings Mixed: In 2002 there were 80 seaside piers in England that were listed. External links Department of Culture, Media and Sport's page on Listed buildings Photographs of listed buildings from English Heritage Information about planning restrictions generally See also UK topics This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.