Conservation Areas

What are Conservation Areas?

Local planning authorities are obliged to designate as Conservation Areas any parts of their own area that are of special architectural or historic interest, the character and appearance of which is desirable to preserve or enhance. The first Conservation Areas were designated in 1967 and there are now over 8000 Conservation Areas in England.

There are 41 Conservation Areas within Wealden District, but 8 of these are located within and managed by the South Downs National Park Authority.

The 33 Conservation Areas within the part of Wealden District for which the Council is the Local Planning Authority were all designated by the Council in March 2017.

Find out if you are in a Conservation Area this links to Wealden’s online mapping system. To search please enter your address or postcode in the centre box, then click on Local Knowledge on the menu bar on the top left hand corner of the page. One of the information boxes as you scroll down tells you if you are in a Conservation Area.

Conservation Area Character Appraisals and Management Plan

The Council is presently drafting Character Appraisal Documents and an over-arching Management Plan for all the Conservation Areas in the District. The Character Appraisal Documents will articulate the special interest and character of each of the Conservation Areas to help inform planning decisions.

Once the text of a draft character appraisal of a Conservation Area has been completed, this document will be available below. Formal public consultation prior to formal adoption by the Council  is likely to commence once all 33 character appraisals have been drafted, along with the accompanying management plan.

Prior to formal public consultation on the documents, photographs and additional figures will be added along with maps associated with the Appendices. Text may also be updated within individual documents.