UK National Site Network: Special Areas of Conservation and Protection

April 2025 UK-wide data on Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Special Protection Areas (SPAs), following the Standard Data Form (SDF) format. The spreadsheet, organized by tabs for site details, interest features, and administrative regions, is maintained by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee. It includes site size, location, designation dates, and feature listings, with country codes for England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and offshore zones.

Use Cases

• Mapping protected area boundaries and site characteristics based on location and size columns.
• Analyzing species and habitat interest features for conservation status assessments based on the SAC and SPA interest feature tabs.
• Categorizing sites by administrative region for policy analysis using the NUTS Level 2 categories tab.
• Identifying sites with marine components for marine protected area network planning based on the SPA site details tab.

Strengths

• Data follows the officially agreed Natura 2000 Standard Data Form (SDF) format.
• Includes separate and combined tabs for SAC and SPA data, with filterable country codes (E, S, W, NI, O).
• Last updated in April 2025 to ensure consistency across reporting.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Gibraltar information is not included in this spreadsheet.

Provenance

Source

Joint Nature Conservation Committee

Collection Method

Gathered as part of the Standard Data Form (SDF) information completed for all sites in the UK National Site Network.

Time Range

Latest data as of April 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-14 09:45:36.553385; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, offshore), excluding Gibraltar.