Landscape Designation
Scenic countryside with national protection
A Landscape Designation marks countryside protected for its scenic beauty and character. In England and Wales it is called a National Landscape, the 2023 name for an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty; the legal designation still reads AONB. Northern Ireland keeps the AONB name, and Scotland's equivalent is the National Scenic Area. Each nation's conservation body handles designation, and the local planning authority runs planning.
What This Means
Living here is unrestricted; the controls sit on the outside. You can decorate, refit and repair the inside of this property without reference to the designation. Extensions, new outbuildings, replacement windows, render, roofing and boundary walls are judged on how they read in the landscape. Some permitted development rights are automatically narrower in a protected landscape. Trees and hedges often carry their own consents. Applications need fuller drawings, and a landscape and visual appraisal where the plot is prominent. This does not normally affect mortgage approval, buildings insurance or resale.
Practical Advice
- Put any external alteration, extension or outbuilding to the local planning authority's pre-application service before you commission drawings.
- Ask a local architect experienced in protected landscapes to quote for the extra design and landscape appraisal work involved.
- Ask the local planning authority whether an Article 4 direction removes any further permitted development rights on this plot.
- Ask your conveyancer to confirm from the local search whether the title sits inside the designation boundary or just outside it.
- Check the local planning authority's Tree Preservation Order register before cutting or felling anything in the garden.
Additional Information
In England, public bodies must now seek to further the purposes of a protected landscape. That duty replaced a weaker one in December 2023. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland keep the older duty to have regard to those purposes, so English planning decisions weigh landscape harm more heavily. The linked guidance covers England only.