This dataset accompanies Environment Agency Chief Scientist's Group research report on 'Exploring water recreation in England' (SC230022/R). The project outlines the extent of recreational use of environmental waters in England based on data provided by 17 organisations largely covering the period between 2017 and 2024. This provides a collated national overview and expands our understanding of where, when and how surface waters are used for recreation.
The dataset was collated from from original data (“reports”) sourced from contributing organisations defined as:
- Water recreation report: A geolocated point where a form of water recreation was indicated either by physical infrastructure or a report of recreational activity.
The open dataset is comprised of three feature layers:
Water recreation locations: An aggregated geolocated point at the centroid of a water recreation zone where reports of water recreation were indicated either by physical infrastructure or recreational activity records.
Water recreation zones: A polygonal area around each water recreation location constructed from the intersection of 500m radius buffer circles around individual geolocated water recreation reports.
Waterbody catchments: Coastal, transitional and river waterbody catchments from the Water Framework Directive cycle 2. For each catchment water recreation information has been summarised and enhanced metadata columns are provided.
Note that in some cases column names have been truncated and the metadata file should be checked for the correct alias names.
There is also a layer file associated with this dataset. There is a layer file called 'Waterrecreationsymbology.lyrx' which displays the column names correctly and sets symbology according to the number of data sources as shown in the research report.
Limitations:
Geocoordinates of water recreation locations in Easting and Northing values have been provided within the dataset for easier data handling, however these points should be treated with caution as they are located at the mathematical centroid of the recreation zone polygon and do not represent a precise water access point.
Reports of water recreation locations have been determined from a desktop study of available existing data (provided as-is and not necessarily originally collected for this purpose). The dataset has been collated systematically but is not exhaustive as certain activities (such as bathing) do not require permission nor a licence and have a low barrier to participate they do not necessarily have a presence in the data. The scope of this study was mainly focused on immersive in-water recreation (swimming) with some limited capture of on-water activities (paddling, rowing, sailing, surfing).
The data is primarily point-based water access locations and has limited coverage of the actual area (i.e. tracks) of where water recreation may take place within a waterbody once entered. Further, data has not been verified on the ground and some data is sourced from non-authoritative sources including community contributions. Inclusion is no guarantee of access (for example sites may require landowner permission, memberships or have time/season limitations).
The time-based data primarily covers the 2017 to 2023 calendar years with limited assessment from the 2024 bathing season and events scheduled in the 2024-25 events season. As such, past indications do not necessarily mean locations are still active, permitted or safely accessible at the time of publication (for example, the data also includes now de-designated bathing points) and the inclusion of sites in this study does not imply sites will be monitored going forward. Attribution statement: © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2025. All rights reserved.
Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights 2024, OS AC0000807064.
Contains © data reproduced under licence from the Royal Yachting Association.
Contains The Rivers Trust data licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and included with permission.
Contains Royal National Lifeboat Institution data licensed under the GIS Open Data licence.
Contains Natural England, Marine Management Organisation, UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Natural Resources Wales information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains data provided and/or sourced with permission © Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation, © British Rowing, © British Triathlon, © Paddle UK, © Royal Life Saving Society UK, © Surfers Against Sewage, © Surfing England, © Swim England, © TimeOutdoors, © Water Buoy Ltd 2024.
Contains data sourced with permission from '2000 Wild Swims' by Rob Fryer (2022).