Conservation areas

[colmjude]

Conservations areas

A conservation area is an area of notable architectural or historical interest which is protected by law against undesirable changes - such as development that will change the overall aesthetics of the area.

What

Conservation areas are designated by Local Planning Authorities and are usually visible on their website (for example, the conservation areas in Leeds).

We developed a Standard for conservation areas so that Local Authorities could start publishing their list of conservation areas as data, we could aggregate a national dataset of conservation areas, and this dataset could be used by data consumers (such as PropTech companies).

The standard currently models a record of the conservation, including a geometry and any supporting documents that evidence the legality of the area. It does not include a breakdown of the restrictions - this is something we might consider in a future iteration of the standard.

The planning data platform currently collects conservation areas from 62 Local planning authorities and has a dataset containing ~8600 records.

Why

Development in conservation areas is usually restricted. Therefore, it is important anyone attempting to do some development can find out if they are in a conservation area and if so, what restrictions apply.

Any software being built to help applicants would need this data to be able to perform these checks for users.

What we're looking for

We would like to know:

• if the data matching the current standard is useful and how it is being used?
• if you think the initial standard captures enough useful information as data
• what documents should be recorded as data
• how you'd like to or currently do use conservation data
• other than the data available on the platform, do you know if other conservation area exists
• anything else you think we should know

[mattlucht]

We're proposing to make a change to the conservation area specification. If/when we make these changes we'll ensure that any data that has already been provided is backward compatible.

• we're proposing to add point to the conservation-area. If a geometry has already been provided then we'll automatically determine the point from the mid-point

[colmjude]

We've made this change now and bumped the version to v1.2.2

[mattlucht]

At the moment we're using start-date to define when a conservation area became a conservation area. In line with how we're defining new specifications we'd like to use a more contextual attribute, but we're not sure how to describe it – would designation-date be the right thing to use?

[colmjude]

The NPPF refers to the "designation of conservation areas" so designation-date sounds right.

[colmjude]

We have now added designation-date to the conservation-area standard.

As part of our drive to reduce ambiguity in our standards we recognise that one area in which we have introduced ambiguity is with dates.

Previously we used the common dates, in particular, start-date to mean different things in different datasets. This was confusing.

We are trying to reduce the chance to misinterpret the purpose of a field by using more meaningful names. If it is an important date to record it should get its own appropriately named field.

That is why we've added designation-date to the conservation-area dataset. We chose designation-date to mirror the language used in the legislation describing how a conservation area is designated.

Please let us know your thoughts on this change and if there are any other ambiguous items in the standards.