Data
Natural England publishes much of its geographic information in the form of Geographic Information System (GIS) datasets.
You can download GIS Digital Boundary Datasets
for protected sites, habitats, and other information either as national datasets covering all of England or in 100km tiles for the larger datasets.
All our publically available GIS datasets are provided under the Open Government Licence and our copyright page provides links to the actual licences you need to reuse our data
Contact us
For any queries about geographic data, please contact our mailbox – NaturalEnglandGIDataManagers@naturalengland.org.uk
Geographic Information for contractors and partners
If you are a contractor recently awarded a contract with Natural England or if you are working in a partnership with Natural England and you require Geographical Information for your project, please see Geographic Information for contractors and partners.
Natural England and INSPIRE
Natural England has statutory obligations to progressively publish metadata and data for datasets within the scope of the INSPIRE Regulations 2009.
Phase 1 of INSPIRE covers the publication of existing datasets. The milestones are:
- December 2010 - Compliant Discovery Metadata published for INSPIRE Annex I & II datasets - complete
- Download this Zip file containing XML files: (45kb)
of Natural England’s metadata for datasets that are in scope of Annex I - or access the Metadata from data.gov.uk
- Download this Zip file containing XML files: (45kb)
- May 2011 - View Services published for INSPIRE Annex I & II datasets (initial operating capability only) - complete
- Access the View Service from data.gov.uk
- Access the View Service from data.gov.uk
- November 2011 - Full View Services to be published for INSPIRE Annex I & II datasets - complete
- June 2012 - Download Services to be published for INSPIRE Annex I & II datasets (dependent on entry into force of EC regulation)
- December 2013 - Discovery Metadata to be published for INSPIRE Annex III datasets
- December 2013 - View Services published for INSPIRE Annex III datasets
- December 2013 - Download Services to published for INSPIRE Annex III datasets
The following Natural England datasets fall into the scope of Annex I. (We have no Annex II datasets).
- Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (England)
- Biosphere Reserves (England)
- Limestone Pavement Orders (England)
- Local Nature Reserves (England)
- Marine Conservation Zones (England)
- National Nature Reserves (England)
- National Parks (England)
- Ramsar (England)
- Sites of Special Scientific Interest (England)
- Special Areas of Conservation (England)
- Special Protection Areas (England)
We will be identifying the datasets that fall within the scope of Annex III during 2012.
Phase 2 of INSPIRE runs from 2012 to 2019 and requires us to progressively make the datasets compliant with the INSPIRE specifications.
Use of the View Service published on data.gov.uk requires access to a suitable GIS product. Please refer to your product help files to determine the best way to add a Web Mapping Service (WMS) to your GIS product of choice.
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Natural England makes GI datasets available under Open Government Licence
(17 April 2012) From 1 April 2012 Natural England has made its publicly available Geographic Information datasets available under the Open Government Licence.
