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.