WFD Surface Water Operational Catchments Cycle 4

Published by:
Environment Agency
Last updated:
07 August 2026
Topic:
Not added
Licence:
Other Licence
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Summary

This is a polygon dataset showing Surface Water Operational Catchments, created to meet the requirements of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). Operational Catchments are larger than catchments associated with water bodies, but they are smaller than Management Catchments. They contain multiple water bodies.

Operational Catchments are a way of grouping WFD Water Bodies together for the purposes of economic appraisal. Every water body has been assigned to an Operational Catchment. They are not always hydrologically correct catchments as the river water bodies may have been grouped based on pressures and measures than hydrology. The Surface Water Operational Catchments dataset also extends to cover Transitional and Coastal Water Bodies. It excludes the underlying groundwater, and linear artificial waters which are published separately.

Created using hydrological models based on EA LiDAR data informed with the Detailed River Network which has residual Ordnance Survey rights.

There is a layer file associated with this dataset which is called WFDSurfaceWaterOperationalCatchmentsCycle4.lyrx. Please note that there are limitations with the shapefile format of the data. The data applies to Cycle 4 of the WFD. Attribution statement: © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2026. All rights reserved.

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Data links

Link to the data Format File added Data preview
OGC API - Features service N/A 07 August 2026 Not available
WFD_Surface_Water_Operational_Catchments_Cycle_4_WFS N/A 07 August 2026 Not available
WFD_Surface_Water_Operational_Catchments_Cycle_4_WMS N/A 07 August 2026 Not available
WFD_Surface_Water_Operational_Catchments_Cycle_4_Download N/A 07 August 2026 Not available
WFD_Surface_Water_Operational_Catchments_Cycle_4.lyrx N/A 07 August 2026 Not available

Additional information

View additional metadata
Added to data.gov.uk
2026-08-03
Access contraints
There are no public access constraints to this data. Use of this data is subject to the licence identified.
Harvest GUID
70e304bb-8fdb-4a98-af6f-62c7e6f38665
Extent
Latitude: 55.8111151497005° to °
Longitude: -6.41866722959945° to 1.76370560966352°
Spatial reference system
http://www.opengis.net/def/crs/EPSG/0/27700
Dataset reference date
2026-07-15 (creation)
2026-08-06 (publication)
2026-07-15 (revision)
Frequency of update
notPlanned
Responsible party
Environment Agency (pointOfContact)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
Source Metadata
XML
HTML

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Licence information

Open Government Licence