Story · Land & heritage map · about 2 min
Conservation areas: a beta list against a settled one
A conservation area protects the character of a whole street, village or town centre. England and Scotland both have them, but how each country keeps its own list turns out to be different, and the platform behind England's admits it.
England: 9,539 areas, 56% confirmed
England has 9,539 conservation areas covering 2,972 km² (2.3% of the country), but the platform that publishes them is explicit that only 56% of boundaries come directly from the local council; the rest are gathered from Historic England and other public sources and may be less exact.
Scotland: one record, 670 areas
Scotland's 670 conservation areas, by contrast, come from a single national record compiled by Historic Environment Scotland: all treated the same way, with no split between confirmed and provisional.
Borthwick & Crichton: one conservation area, 1,181 hectares
Sizes vary hugely under the same designation: Borthwick & Crichton, near Edinburgh, covers 1,181 hectares of countryside and villages, while Udny Green covers just 0.28 hectares, a single small green.
England: more areas, smaller ones
England has 14 times as many conservation areas as Scotland (9,539 against 670) but they cover only 11 times the ground (2,972 km² against 266 km²). So England's are smaller on average: about 31 hectares each against 40 in Scotland, though England's list is still being compiled and partly overlaps itself.
For classrooms and curious minds
Questions to talk about, alone or in a group.
- Why might a list that is still being compiled be less reliable than a settled one?
- What does protecting the character of a place mean, compared with protecting one building?
Try it on the map: Find a conservation area near you in each nation that has them. Which is larger on the map?
The figures above are calculated from the datasets listed on Data & sources and are approximate: many map layers are modelled or interpolated. Read each layer’s caveats on the map.