Conservation Areas - Scotland

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Conservation Areas - Scotland

Open Data

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.

An Article 4 Direction is not a conservation designation but an additional control within such areas. It is a statement made under The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2011. The Direction, made by a local authority and approved by Scottish Ministers, removes all or some of the permitted development rights on an area.

The effect of a Direction is that planning permission will be required for specific types of development which would otherwise be regarded as 'permitted development', i.e. development that does not require a planning application. Directions can cover a variety of minor works and might include: the replacement of doors and windows, the erection of gates, fences, garages, sheds, porches, storage tanks or the installation of satellite antennae.

This dataset should be used in conjunction with the Article 4 Directions dataset also published on a Scotland-wide basis.
Dataset Created
11/06/2021
Licence
Open
Contact
Improvement Service
Last Updated
27/05/2026
Data Provided by
Improvement Service
Alternative Name
coar
Lineage
This dataset was amalgamated, optimised and published by the Spatial Hub. This is an amalgamation of two prior datasets, Conservation Areas and Article 4 Directions, which in many cases overlap equally. These cases are assumed to indicate Conservation Areas with associated Article 4 Directions and the duplicate areas are removed as Article 4 Directions prior to amalgamation of these two datasets.The following quality assurance checks and corrections are carried out on the data: - Polygons are not dissolved/ aggregated by key name and local authority.- The minimum polygon area allowed in the data is 5 square metres- Checks for invalid geometry types- The maximum angle for any spikes is 3 degrees- Any duplicate geometry is removed from the data- Duplicate key names for polygons are not removed- Polygons with no key names are not removed- Checks for basic geometry i.e. self-intersectionPlease contact spatialhub@improvementservice.org.uk for more details.
SSDI Link (External Site)
Frequency of Update
as needed
Formats:
WFS WMS SHAPEFILE GEOJSON
site_ref site_name local_authority policy_url policy_ref status date_designated date_redes art4_direction notes la_s_code
None Albyn Place/Rubislaw Aberdeen City None None None None None None None S12000033
None Bon-Accord Crescent/Crown Street Aberdeen City None None None None None None None S12000033
None City Centre Aberdeen City None None None None None None None S12000033
CA419 FORDYCE Aberdeenshire https://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/media/6282/cafordyce.pdf None None 1972 0 None None S12000034
CA421 PENNAN Aberdeenshire https://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/media/6296/capennan.pdf None None 1977 0 None None S12000034
None Cove Bay Aberdeen City None None None None None None None S12000033
None Ferryhill Aberdeen City None None None None None None None S12000033
None Footdee Aberdeen City None None None None None None None S12000033
None Beech Road/ Garngaber Avenue & Seven Sisters Conservation Area, Seven Sisters Section East Dunbartonshire None CA258 None None None None None S12000045
None Great Western Road Aberdeen City None None None None None None None S12000033
Format Last Updated
CSV 18/01/2024
WFS 18/01/2024
WMTS 18/01/2024
Shapefile 18/01/2024
Resources Format Last Updated
Conservation Area WFS 18/01/2024 More info
Child Dataset(s) Resources Last Updated
Conservation Areas - Aberdeen City 5 17/11/2021 More info
Conservation Areas - Aberdeenshire 1 22/12/2022 More info
Conservation Areas - Angus 2 30/03/2017 More info
Conservation Areas - City of Edinburgh 2 31/03/2017 More info
Conservation Areas - Dundee City 3 26/01/2023 More info
Conservation Areas - Fife 6 01/02/2023 More info
Conservation Areas - Glasgow City 2 22/03/2023 More info
Conservation Areas - North Ayrshire 2 22/09/2023 More info
Conservation Areas - North Lanarkshire 1 31/08/2021 More info
Conservation Areas - Orkney Islands 1 10/05/2019 More info
Conservation Areas - South Ayrshire 1 27/02/2017 More info
Conservation Areas - Stirling 1 11/04/2023 More info

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This is version 1.0
Last Updated on 19/05/2026