Pick the right development site for your planning project by evaluating landscape character, quality and value with a landscape sensitivity and capacity assessment (LSCA).
Last updated: April 2026
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Pick the right development site and protect your planning project with a Landscape Sensitivity and Capacity Assessment (LSCA). The essential survey evaluates landscape character, quality and value to determine how much change an area can handle without significant harm.
While we don’t carry out this specific service ourselves, we work closely with a specialist partner company to ensure you get the expert guidance you need. An LSCA is a powerful tool for backing energy developments, supporting local plan site appraisals, and boosting design guidance.
By assessing factors like visibility, land use, and scenic quality, the assessment provides a clear capacity rating (low, moderate, or high) for your proposed development. This evidence-based approach helps you avoid conflicts with local authorities and regulators, keeping your project on track.
Why use an LSCA?
Site Selection: Identify the most resilient areas for housing or infrastructure.
Planning Evidence: Build a defensive case for applications and appeals.
Design Guidance: Inform layout and scale based on local landscape conditions.
Get in touch today, and we’ll connect you with our trusted partners to start your assessment.
Before confirming the exact location of a development, it’s crucial that the developer knows the best possible place for the change to happen and how sensitive the landscape is to such changes. Not only that, but knowing this will also play an important role in meeting the needs of the local authorities and planners.
In a landscape sensitivity and capacity assessment (LSCA), a consultant surveyor will be able to assess both the character, quality and value of a landscape alongside the level of development it can withstand without experiencing significant harm. With a dual focus, an LSCA is ideal for boosting design guidance, backing energy development decisions, and supporting local plan site appraisals.
A landscape and sensitivity capacity assessment (LSCA) is an inspection combining two separate types of analysis. The first is landscape sensitivity and covers how vulnerable the area is to certain types of development, whereas the second is landscape capacity and covers how much change the area can take without sustaining particularly damaging negative effects.
Informed by the results and groundwork of a prior landscape survey, an LSCA will benefit from the pivotal mapping data and a comprehensive description of the location’s existing qualities and features. Information from a landscape assessment could, for example, include an analysis of land use, local landscape character, topography and visibility.
Based on new and existing details, the LSCA can interpret the findings to judge the landscape’s resilience and suitability for change, often in response to proposals like housing, energy infrastructure or new roads. Due to how it works alongside other landscape surveys, an LSCA has become a key tool in development design and sustainable planning.
As a result of its name, it is understandable that an LSCA could be confused with a landscape capacity study. In fact, both are similar, but there are unique differences between the two options.
While a landscape sensitivity and capacity assessment comes early in the planning process and focuses on a landscape’s sensitivity and capacity for change, a landscape capacity study comes after a sensitivity assessment and focuses on how much development a landscape can take.
It could be that only one of the two services is needed, with an LSCA usually being sufficient in early site selection. More detailed projects, however, may need both to be used together. In this scenario, the LSCA would help to understand the overall suitability, and the capacity study would build on that to show exactly how much and where development could happen.
Planning consultants, developers and local planning authorities all use LSCAs, but often for a selection of different purposes.
For instance, it can evaluate the cumulative effects across the wider landscapes, guide site design and layout based on the local landscape conditions, inform which areas are best suited for new housing, employment or energy infrastructure, and work as evidence for planning applications, appeals and policy decisions.
Setting out a landscape’s potential response to different development scenarios, a landscape sensitivity and capacity assessment builds a clear and defensive evidence base by analysing how sensitive a landscape is and how much change it could realistically handle, especially in relation to housing, infrastructure or renewable energy projects.
An assessment will be particularly useful for design strategies, local development plans or site appraisals, and it often includes input from local community groups and other stakeholders during the consultation stage.
During the landscape sensitivity assessment of an LSCA, consultants look at several key factors, such as:
Once a surveyor assesses sensitivity, they begin to consider how much change the landscape can take, which moves them along to the capacity part of the assessment.
At this point, the potential impacts from likely effects are analysed, such as the character fit, layout, scale and visibility. The assessment has the ability to cover entire zones or individual sites, and it is especially helpful during the site selection process for local development plans.
Every area covered within the LSCA will be given a capacity rating between low, moderate and high based on the level of resilience to the proposed development. The capacity studies then go on to shape design choices, planning applications and public consultations, and alongside the earlier sensitivity studies, they act as a landscape and visual toolkit in sustainable development planning.
By taking into account the likely effects of development scenarios on the landscape, you can guarantee that your plans aren’t going to contradict community groups, local authorities or relevant regulators such as Natural England or DEFRA.
With the help of landscape architects and consultants, you can get a better understanding of landscape character, quality and value before making any decisions that could harm the visual appearance of the area you’re working on.
The team at Arbtech uses a specialist team of landscape surveyors for such services. With it, we can guide you with the right landscape surveys to book. All you need to do is get in touch through our contact page – or by calling or emailing us directly – and we can talk you through the options offered by our partner company and provide you with a free quote.
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