Natura 2000 site administrative regions

Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas in the UK, designated under the EC Habitats Directive. The dataset contains one row for each combination of individual site and administrative region, with administrative regions derived from the EU's NUTS classification. It is maintained by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and received a substantive update on 22 December 2015.

Use Cases

• Mapping the distribution of protected habitats based on the site and region combinations.
• Analyzing changes in conservation site designations over time using the archived versions.
• Studying the classification of marine versus terrestrial sites based on the 'extra regio' (UKZZ) code.
• Tracking administrative responsibility for conservation areas using the NUTS-derived region list.

Strengths

• Includes a substantive update from 22 December 2015 (Tranche 50).
• Archived versions are available, forming a time series useful for tracking changes.
• Covers both Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Special Protection Areas (SPAs).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Joint Nature Conservation Committee

Collection Method

Derived from UK-wide data submitted to the EU Commission as part of Standard Data Form submissions.

Time Range

Time series available via archived versions; a major update occurred on 22 December 2015.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-14 09:45:34.035115; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom, including marine sites below low water (coded UKZZ).