Conservation Areas

Under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997 a local authority may determine which parts of its area are of special architectural or historic interest and may designate these as Conservation Areas. The public will normally be consulted on any proposal to designate conservation areas or to change their boundaries. There are over 600 Conservation Areas in Scotland. Many were designated in the early 1970s, but some have since been re-designated, merged, renamed, given smaller or larger boundaries and new ones have been added. They can cover historic land, battlefields, public parks, designed landscapes or railways but most contain groups of buildings extending over areas of a village, town or city. Further planning controls on development can be made by way of an Article 4 Direction, which may or may not be associated with a Conservation Area.

We can capture Article 4 Directions separately - go to the upload for that data.

However, the final published data layer will contain Conservation Areas, Conservation Areas with associated Article 4 Directions, Article 4 Directions associated with a Conservation Area, and a small number of discrete Article 4 Direction areas.