Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to create more conservation areas across London.

In this, the 50th anniversary of their introduction, I can confirm that in total nearly 10,000 localities in England have been designated as conservation areas, including over 1,000 in London. Though the Secretary of State has discretion to designate conservation areas, local planning authorities are generally best placed to do so by identifying those parts of their locality that possess special architectural or historic interest. Historic England has recently published guidance to support local planning authorities through this process.