Which nations does this cover?

England and Wales: the 10 parks held by Natural England and the 3 held by Natural Resources Wales, 13 in total. Scotland's two national parks are designated under separate Scottish legislation and are not yet included. Northern Ireland has no national parks designated under the 1949 Act.

What is the statutory basis for a national park?

National parks in England and Wales are designated under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. The custodians are Natural England in England and Natural Resources Wales in Wales.

Are the boundaries map-ready?

Yes. Every park boundary is served as valid EPSG:4326 (WGS84) geometry, reprojected server-side from British National Grid (27700). You can plot it straight onto a web map or run a spatial query without converting projections.

How do I check whether a site is inside a national park?

Send a point, radius, bounding box or polygon to the REST endpoint and it returns any park boundary that matches. You can also fetch a single park directly by its stable id.

What does the licence allow?

All records are Open Government Licence v3.0 from named public-sector custodians. Each record returns its attribution, so you can reuse the data commercially as long as you keep that attribution. The product deliberately excludes non-OGL sources to keep reuse clean.

Do you include the Welsh names?

Yes. Welsh parks carry their Cymraeg names in the name_cy field, so Eryri sits alongside Snowdonia and Bannau Brycheiniog alongside Brecon Beacons.

How often is it updated?

The dataset is refreshed monthly against the source registers. National park boundaries change rarely, so most records stay stable between updates, and any change to area or boundary is reflected at the next refresh.

Live

Conservation & Nature

New

UK National Parks

The 13 national parks of England and Wales, from Natural England and Natural Resources Wales, each with its statutory boundary in EPSG:4326 and a stable id.

National parks

England and Wales

Nations covered

EPSG:4326

Geometry

OGL v3.0

Licence

Overview

About this dataset

National parks are the largest protected landscapes in England and Wales, designated for conservation and public enjoyment. This dataset gives you all 13 of them as mapped boundaries you can query by location, each carrying a stable identity, its designation date and its area in hectares.

The statutory basis is the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. Natural England holds the 10 English parks; Natural Resources Wales holds the 3 Welsh parks, Eryri (Snowdonia), Pembrokeshire Coast and Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons). Welsh parks are served with their Cymraeg names in the name_cy field.

We take both registers and reconcile them into one schema with one identity per park. Boundaries are reprojected from British National Grid (27700) to EPSG:4326 (WGS84) server-side, so every record maps without further work. Query by point, radius, bounding box or polygon over REST, or fetch a single park by its stable id.

Scotland's two national parks sit under separate Scottish legislation and are not yet included; we say so rather than imply national cover we do not have. Everything is Open Government Licence v3.0 from named public-sector custodians, with attribution returned on every record, so commercial reuse stays clean. National park boundaries sit alongside the wider conservation and heritage designations in the same spatial model, so a single point query can return every constraint that touches a site.

What's included

Everything in the box

Spatial boundary queries

Query the parks by point, radius, bounding box or polygon, or fetch one park by its stable id over REST.

Mapping-ready geometry

Every boundary is valid EPSG:4326 (WGS84), reprojected server-side from British National Grid, so it maps without a reprojection step.

Two registers, one schema

Natural England and Natural Resources Wales reconciled into a single schema with one stable identity per park.

Bilingual Welsh names

Welsh parks carry their Cymraeg names in name_cy, so Eryri and Bannau Brycheiniog appear as well as Snowdonia and Brecon Beacons.

Clean OGL provenance

Open Government Licence v3.0 from named custodians, with per-record attribution returned for clean commercial reuse.

Honest dates and area

Each park carries its designation date with a precision flag and its area in hectares, so a year-only value is never served as an exact date.

Data fields

What each record carries

schema14 fields

reference: string// Stable reference for the park within its source register.

nation: enum// Nation code for the park: ENG or WAL.

source: string// Named public-sector custodian of the record.

name: string// Common name of the national park.

name_cy: string// Welsh-language name where applicable, otherwise null.

designation_type: enum// Designation class. Always national_park for this dataset.

designated_date: date// Date the park was designated.

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

category: string// Protected-area category for the designation.

local_authority: string// Authority responsible for the area.

area_hectares: float// Area of the park in hectares.

source_url: string// Link to the custodian's register entry for the park.

centroid: object// Representative point of the park as lat/lng in EPSG:4326.

attribution: string// Required attribution text for the record.

Sample response

Straight from the API

response.jsonapplication/json

{
  "id": "design.conservation.ENG.national_park.lake_district",
  "reference": "lake_district",
  "nation": "ENG",
  "source": "Natural England",
  "name": "Lake District",
  "name_cy": null,
  "designation_type": "national_park",
  "designated_date": "1951-05-09",
  "amended_date": null,
  "date_precision": "day",
  "category": "protected_landscape",
  "local_authority": "Lake District National Park Authority",
  "area_hectares": 236200,
  "source_url": "https://naturalengland-defra.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/national-parks-england",
  "centroid": {
    "lat": 54.4609,
    "lng": -3.0886
  },
  "licence": "OGL-UK-3.0",
  "attribution": "Contains Natural England data licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0"
}

Use cases

What people build with it

Site due diligence

Check whether a development site falls inside a national park boundary before committing to a scheme, since park status carries stricter planning control.

Developers

Planning constraint checks

Return national park designation alongside other constraints from a single point query when assessing an application.

Planners

Valuation risk

Flag properties inside a national park where permitted development rights are restricted and works need fuller consent.

Surveyors

Underwriting and exposure

Screen a portfolio for assets inside protected landscapes to inform underwriting and aggregation views.

Insurers

Location data products

Embed accurate park boundaries in property apps and mapping tools without sourcing each register yourself.

PropTech