PLANNING POLICY, PRACTICE AND DATA

Welcome to my planning page. This currently serves as a holding point for material that may be of interest to others with an interest in UK planning issues.

Conservation Areas

I have carried out a range of research into issues related to heritage conservation in England, including the following paper.

New perspectives on evolving planning practice in English Conservation Areas (Aug 2017, 3MB)

My research included the creation of a new inventory of English Conservation Areas (CAs), which I believe represents the first full enumeration ever published. It contains details of 9,793 CAs spread across England's 336 Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) including the National Park Authorities, although it is believed to contain a small number of duplicates.

This pdf document includes some background on the methodology employed, some maps of various CA attributes, the full listing of English CAs (including LPA, Heritage at Risk status and, where available, original designation date and land area covered), and a set of links to the websites of each of the underlying LPAs.

A new inventory of English Conservation Areas (Sep 2017, 3MB)

In February 2021, this inventory was superseded by a new spatial dataset incorporating boundary data for all English CAs, which I believe is the most comprehensive currently available. It contains details of all 9,779 unique CAs in England, plus 139 additional sub-components where CAs cross LPA boundaries.

The document below includes a description of the dataset and its construction methodology, and should be read before use as it includes full background on data sources and licensing. The dataset is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, but contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0, which should be also be referenced in any re-use of the data.

About this dataset v.2.0 (Feb 2021, 0.3MB)

The data is provided in shapefile (SHP) format in the following zipped folder:

English Conservation Areas - national spatial dataset v.2.0 (Feb 2021, 37MB)

You can also link to an overview of the data sources and an interactive preview of the overall map.

The document below contains a short updated overview of the spatial characteristics of English CAs, based on the new dataset.

English Conservation Areas - an updated spatial review (Feb 2021, 2.3MB)

For any queries or comments regarding the dataset, please contact Ian Hall. Feedback from anyone who finds the dataset useful would be very helpful for assessing the merits of further enhancement or maintenance efforts. Users of the dataset should ideally cite 'English Conservation Area dataset 2020' and link back to this page and the two related licensing pages.