What counts as a Marine Protected Area in this dataset?

It groups the UK's national marine nature designations: Marine Conservation Zones in England and Northern Ireland, Nature Conservation Marine Protected Areas in Scotland, and the Marine Nature Reserve at Skomer in Wales. These protect nationally important marine wildlife, habitats and geology. Each is treated as one record with one stable identity.

Which nations are covered?

All four UK nations. England and Northern Ireland contribute Marine Conservation Zones, Scotland contributes Nature Conservation Marine Protected Areas, and Wales contributes the Skomer Marine Nature Reserve. They are reconciled from four separate national registers into a single schema.

What is the difference between an MCZ and a Highly Protected Marine Area?

Both sit under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 in England. A Marine Conservation Zone protects specified features, while a Highly Protected Marine Area applies stronger, whole-site protection. The protection_level field distinguishes them so you can filter one from the other.

How current is the data?

The snapshot-versioned model is refreshed monthly from the source custodians. Marine designations change infrequently, so a monthly cadence keeps the dataset aligned with the registers without churning stable records.

What licence applies and how must I attribute it?

Everything is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0, sourced only from named public-sector custodians. Each record returns its source custodian and the licence, so attribution travels with the data for clean commercial reuse.

Why does the geometry extend offshore beyond the coastline?

Marine designations are defined in the sea, so their boundaries legitimately sit beyond the terrestrial coastline. The geometry is reprojected server-side to valid EPSG:4326, so those offshore extents map correctly rather than being clipped to land.

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Conservation & Nature

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Marine Protected Areas

Marine Conservation Zones, Scottish Nature Conservation MPAs, NI MCZs and the Skomer Marine Nature Reserve, reconciled from four national registers into one schema with EPSG:4326 geometry.

Nations covered

National registers reconciled

EPSG:4326

Geometry projection

OGL v3.0

Licence

Overview

About this dataset

Marine Protected Areas covers the UK's national marine nature designations: Marine Conservation Zones in England, Nature Conservation Marine Protected Areas in Scotland, Marine Conservation Zones in Northern Ireland, and the Marine Nature Reserve at Skomer in Wales. Each record names the protected site, its designation type, its date and a mappable point.

The designations rest on four separate statutes. England's MCZs and Highly Protected Marine Areas sit under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 s.116, maintained by Natural England with JNCC for offshore sites. Scotland's NCMPAs follow the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010, held by NatureScot. Northern Ireland's MCZs come from the Marine Act (Northern Ireland) 2013 via DAERA's Northern Ireland Environment Agency. Skomer is designated under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 s.36 and curated by Natural Resources Wales.

We reconcile those four registers into one schema with one stable identifier per designation. Every site carries valid EPSG:4326 geometry, reprojected server-side from its native grid, so offshore boundaries that legitimately extend beyond the coastline map in the right place. A date_precision flag keeps year-only designation dates honest, and each record returns its source custodian and Open Government Licence v3.0 attribution.

Query the data by point, radius, bounding box or polygon over /v1/conservation, or fetch a single designation by its stable id. The free /types endpoint lists the marine designation vocabulary for evaluation, and the product links by geometry to the wider conservation and heritage designations served on the same model.

What's included

Everything in the box

Point to polygon queries

Query by point, radius, bounding box or polygon, or fetch a single designation by its stable id.

Four registers, one schema

England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland reconciled from four separate national registers into one shape with one identity per site.

Correct offshore geometry

Valid EPSG:4326 geometry reprojected server-side, so offshore boundaries that extend beyond the coastline render in the right place.

Highly Protected flag

A protection_level field separates standard Marine Conservation Zones from England's Highly Protected Marine Areas.

Welsh bilingual names

Where a custodian publishes a Welsh site name, it is returned in name_cy alongside the English name.

OGL provenance

Every record carries its source custodian and Open Government Licence v3.0 attribution for clean commercial reuse.

Data fields

What each record carries

schema14 fields

reference: string// Identifier for the designation within its national register.

nation: enum// UK nation whose register holds the designation (ENG, SCO, WAL, NIR).

source: string// Custodian that maintains the source register.

name: string// Official name of the protected site.

name_cy: string// Welsh-language site name where the custodian publishes one.

designation_type: enum// Marine designation type (marine_conservation_zone, nature_conservation_mpa, marine_nature_reserve).

protection_level: enum// Whether the site is a standard or highly protected marine area.

designated_date: date// Date the designation took legal effect.

date_precision: enum// Precision of designated_date: day, month, year or none.

local_authority: string// Responsible or adjacent local authority where recorded.

area_hectares: float// Designated marine area in hectares.

centroid: object// EPSG:4326 (WGS84) latitude and longitude of the site centroid.

source_url: string// Link to the custodian's published record.

attribution: string// Attribution statement required on reuse.

Sample response

Straight from the API

response.jsonapplication/json

{
  "id": "design.mpa.ENG.marine_conservation_zone.UKMCZ0042",
  "reference": "UKMCZ0042",
  "nation": "ENG",
  "source": "Natural England",
  "name": "Aln Estuary",
  "name_cy": null,
  "designation_type": "marine_conservation_zone",
  "protection_level": "standard",
  "designated_date": "2013-11-21",
  "amended_date": null,
  "date_precision": "day",
  "category": "Marine Conservation Zone",
  "local_authority": "Northumberland",
  "area_hectares": 12.4,
  "source_url": "https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/marine-protected-areas/",
  "centroid": { "lat": 55.3899, "lng": -1.6042 },
  "licence": "OGL v3.0",
  "attribution": "Contains Natural England and JNCC data, Open Government Licence v3.0."
}

Use cases

What people build with it

Coastal and marine site due diligence

Check whether a proposed coastal or offshore site intersects a Marine Conservation Zone or other protected area before acquisition or works.

Developers

Marine planning constraint checks

Test marine licences and coastal applications against the statutory designations for the relevant nation.

Planners

Environmental underwriting screens

Flag proximity to protected marine sites when pricing coastal, port or marine liability risk.

Insurers

Biodiversity and ESG screening

Screen portfolios and projects for overlap with nationally important marine habitats and geology.

Investors