Block Management in Stow-on-the-Wold
Block, estate and leasehold management for Stow-on-the-Wold. Compliance is tracked against Cotswold District Council and the county above it.
Managing a Block in Stow-on-the-Wold at a Glance
- Local authority
- Cotswold District Council
- Authority type
- District, under the county council
- Building control
- Cotswold District Council Building Control
- County
- Gloucestershire
- Fire and rescue service
- Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service
- Water and sewerage
- Thames Water
- Setting
- Inland
Who You Deal with in Stow-on-the-Wold
A block in Stow-on-the-Wold deals with Cotswold District Council for building control and planning, with the county council above it. Fire safety in the common parts is enforced by Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service. Communal water and sewerage is Thames Water.
The Residential Stock in Stow-on-the-Wold
The Stow ward is about twice the size of the town, so the published figure of 1,222 households needs correcting before use. Narrowing to the census output areas inside the built-up area gives 590 households, of which 42 are in purpose-built blocks, 7.1 per cent, seven in a converted or shared house, 11 in another converted building and 14 over commercial premises. Those last two categories are the distinctive ones: at 1.9 and 2.4 per cent respectively they are the highest shares of the Cotswold towns covered here, which is what flats over shops around a market square look like in the census. Stow is also much the smallest of these towns by dwellings, at well under half the size of Moreton-in-Marsh.
Flood Risk in Stow-on-the-Wold
No Environment Agency flood warning or alert area contains any part of Stow-on-the-Wold. The containment figure is zero, and the reason is the town's position: it sits on the hilltop, with the nearest floodplain on the Dikler nearly a kilometre downslope. Every candidate area returned by a proximity search is discarded, and one of them is a particularly clean illustration of why that test matters. The Dikler warning area is labelled as running between Stow-on-the-Wold and Bourton-on-the-Water and its published description names Hyde Mill near Slaughter woods, Stow-on-the-Wold, yet its polygon does not touch the Stow built-up area at all, stopping about 1.25 kilometres away. A search on the town's name would return it and be wrong. For a block here the river flood question is genuinely closed, which is worth saying plainly because so few places can.
For a block that reaches leaseholders through the insurance premium and excess, and through the management pack when someone sells.
Conservation Areas and Listed Buildings in Stow-on-the-Wold
One conservation area, designated on 4 November 1970 and covering the town jointly with the neighbouring hamlet of Maugersbury, with a later record date of July 1989. That 1970 date makes it the earliest designation of the Cotswold towns covered here. There is no appraisal and no character map, only a boundary map. What makes it unusual is its proportion rather than its size: at 35.39 hectares it covers 23.8 per cent of the built-up area, the highest conservation area to town ratio of the Cotswold towns covered here, so nearly a quarter of this small, tight town is designated with no adopted character assessment behind it.
117 entries on the National Heritage List fall inside the built-up area, and one of them is Grade I, the parish church of St Edward, which is the only Grade I listed building in any of the three north Cotswold towns covered here. Four are Grade II*, the Masonic Hall, St Edward's House, the King's Arms Hotel and the Royalist Hotel, and 114 of the 117 sit inside the conservation area. The density is the striking figure: 117 listed entries in a built-up area of just 80 hectares, roughly twice the concentration of either Bourton-on-the-Water or Moreton-in-Marsh.
The sequencing is what catches boards out: consent first, then the Section 20 specification. Specify and consult before consent is in hand and the consultation has to be run again.
Radon in Stow-on-the-Wold
The highest reading of the Cotswold towns covered here, and effectively uniform. Of the six one-kilometre squares over the built-up area, class 5 covers 97.3 per cent of the town, where the published wording is that some parts of the square are in bands of elevated radon potential with a maximum radon potential of 10 to 30 per cent of homes at or above the action level and the advice is that radon measurement is advised. The remaining fraction is class 4 at 5 to 10 per cent. There is no low-band ground anywhere in the town, which sets it against Moreton-in-Marsh eight miles north where the whole town reads 1 to 3 per cent.
Nobody's flat includes the plant room or the undercroft, which is why those get overlooked. A three-month test is cheap and the result sits with the compliance record.
Planning Policy That Affects Flats in Stow-on-the-Wold
Decided under the Cotswold District Local Plan 2011 to 2031, adopted 3 August 2018. The Stow-on-the-Wold and the Swells Neighbourhood Plan was made on 3 October 2024 following a referendum on 26 September 2024 carried by 82 per cent of those voting, which makes it much the most recent of the neighbourhood plans covering the Cotswold towns here. There is no Article 4 direction: Stow appears nowhere among the district's 22 directions, checked against both the national register and the council's own page. The whole of the built-up area lies inside the Cotswolds National Landscape.
This is development plan policy, so it binds the council when it decides an application and it binds a leaseholder's alteration just as it binds a developer's scheme. It sits alongside, not instead of, the consent the lease requires.
Changing Managing Agent in Stow-on-the-Wold
A board does not need a reason to change agent and does not need the outgoing agent's agreement. It needs to follow its own articles and serve whatever notice the management agreement requires. On Stow-on-the-Wold heritage stock the consents history is what most often turns out to be incomplete, and its absence resurfaces later as a planning problem.
See the handover sequence in full, and our fees, which are a fixed annual amount with no commission on contractor work.
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Stow-on-the-Wold Questions
Which Council Does a Block in Stow-on-the-Wold Deal With?
Cotswold District Council Building Control. A district council, with the county council above it for county functions.
Who Enforces Fire Safety in the Common Parts in Stow-on-the-Wold?
Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service, as the enforcing authority for the Fire Safety Order.
Who Supplies Water to a Development in Stow-on-the-Wold?
Thames Water. A communal supply is the building's contract, not a leaseholder's, so report a loss to common parts through us.
Do We Need Consent for External Works in Stow-on-the-Wold?
On a listed building or in a conservation area, yes, for much that would be permitted elsewhere. Get it before the Section 20 specification, not after.
Nearby Areas
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