UK Licensed Marine Disposal Sites with Status and Regulatory History

A GIS shapefile repository of all designated marine disposal sites across the UK and Crown Dependencies, regulated under the London Convention/Protocol. Sites are classified as Open, Disused, or Closed based on their licensing activity within the last 5 to 10 years. This dataset includes both historic legacy sites and newly designated areas for reporting disposal volumes to international bodies like IMO and OSPAR.

Use Cases

• Mapping regulated waste disposal zones based on the geographic extents of licensed sites.
• Analyzing site status trends (Open, Disused, Closed) based on the 5- and 10-year licensing activity rules.
• Supporting regulatory reporting to IMO and OSPAR based on the annual and biennial volume reporting framework.
• Distinguishing between historic legacy sites and new disposal sites based on the UK's ratification timeline of the London Convention/Protocol.

Strengths

• Covers the entire UK, including England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man.
• Includes a clear regulatory status classification system (Open, Disused, Closed) with defined time thresholds of 5 and 10 years.
• Distinguishes between historic legacy sites and newly designated sites, providing temporal context.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Collection Method

Designated and characterized by regulators under the London Convention/Protocol framework.

Time Range

Includes sites from before the UK's treaty ratification to present.

Freshness

Last updated date is unknown.

Geography

United Kingdom, including England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man.