England's Special Protection and Conservation Areas as of April 2021

April 2021 boundaries for Special Protection Areas (SPA) and Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) in England. The dataset is static and was published by Natural England to support gamebird licensing from 31 May 2021 onwards. It contains Ordnance Survey data under Crown copyright.

Use Cases

• Assess land development proposals based on proximity to protected conservation sites.
• Model habitat connectivity for protected species based on designated area boundaries.
• Support licensing decisions for gamebird releases based on statutory site locations.

Strengths

• Definitive snapshot of statutory protected sites as of April 2021.
• Published by the official government body for the natural environment in England (Natural England).

Limitations

• The dataset is static and not planned to be updated, so boundaries may be outdated.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Natural England, containing Ordnance Survey data.

Time Range

Snapshot as of April 2021.

Freshness

Static (not planned to be updated). Last metadata update: 2026-07-13.

Geography

England.