Catchment Data Explorer: Water Body Status Objectives for England

England's water body status objectives data describes the long-term planned ecological, chemical, and quantitative status targets for surface waters and groundwater. The dataset supports the Water Framework Directive river basin management plans and is provided by the Environment Agency. It was last updated on July 6, 2026.

Use Cases

• Tracking progress towards water quality targets based on planned status objectives.
• Analyzing the cost-benefit and feasibility of water body restoration measures based on the described objective-setting methodology.
• Supporting river basin management planning based on the requirement to prevent deterioration and protect designated areas.
• Modeling ecological or groundwater recovery timelines based on the date component of each objective.

Strengths

• Data is explicitly linked to the Water Framework Directive river basin management plans.
• Objectives include both a target status and a planned achievement date for each water body.
• Covers two distinct status types for surface waters and two for groundwater.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Freshness should be verified as the last update timestamp is from a future date (2026).

Provenance

Source

Environment Agency

Collection Method

Derived from objectives for individual elements within water bodies, considering technical feasibility, cost-benefit, and regulatory requirements.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-06 07:09:23.787187

Geography

England