Manx National Heritage is appealing against the decision to remove a warehouse from the protected buildings register.

The former Farmers’ Combine on West Quay in Ramsey had previously been registered as a historic building and was removed from the register after a successful application by a business owned by businessman Trevor Hemmings.

It was announced last month that the Department for Environment, Food and Agriculture approved the bid.

The department ruled the ’entirety of the building did not reach a sufficiently high bar to be of architectural or historic interest in the national context’.

MNH has now appealed that decision saying the decision was made ’through an internal departmental process’ and the appeal would allow ’open and public consideration by an independent inspector’.

In a statement, MNH said the decision to remove the building’s listed status had been made ’in contradiction, not only of specialist advice and comments received by DEFA, but also the recommendation of the director of planning’.

Director of MNH Edmund Southworth said: ’We have considered this matter very carefully, and our decision to appeal against the ruling has not been taken lightly.

’We believe the decision to de-register this building may not have followed appropriate procedure and that the condition of the building has become a factor, when clearly the rules do not allow this to be a material consideration.’

Ramsey MHK Lawrie Hooper said ’the public and Ramsey Commissioners are supportive of the de-registration’ and he supports them on that.

He added: ’My concern with the appeal was the nature of it and that MNH waited until the last possible day to submit the appeal.

’The reason given for the appeal wasn’t that MNH disagree with the outcome, nor are they arguing the process was not correctly followed.

’Instead they simply argue that the decision followed the internal departmental process, was contrary to the professional officer’s recommendation and an appeal would allow an independent inspector to make a recommendation.’

The Liberal Vannin member said he would like to work with MNH if it wanted to explore making changes to the deregistration process.