Open Access Registered Common Land in Wales (CRoW Act)

A redacted version of the 'Common Land (CROW Act) Fully Attributed Dataset' prepared by Natural Resources Wales. Digitisation for all Wales was completed in 2014, and the dataset excludes categories such as Urban Commons and Village Greens. It is published under the OGL-UK-3.0 license by the Government Digital Service.

Use Cases

• Mapping public access rights for recreation based on registered common land.
• Analyzing land management and conservation areas based on the exclusion of specific land types like Urban Commons.
• Supporting policy enforcement for Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) based on the legislative context.
• Integrating with other statutory land datasets to understand the full extent of open access land.

Strengths

• Covers all registered common land and open country for the entire geography of Wales.
• Digitisation was completed in a specific year (2014), providing a historical snapshot.
• Explicitly excludes specific land categories, clarifying its scope.

Limitations

• Row count and file format are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Collection Method

Digitisation of maps prepared by Natural Resources Wales under Section 4 of the CRoW Act.

Time Range

Digitisation completed in 2014.

Freshness

Last updated date is unknown.

Geography

Wales