This spreadsheet contains the UK wide data submitted to the EU Commmission as part of the Standard Data Form information completed for all Special Protection Areas. Special Protection Areas (SPAs) are strictly protected sites classified in accordance with Article 4 of the EC Birds Directive, which came into force in April 1979. They are classified for rare and vulnerable birds (as listed on Annex I of the Directive), and for regularly occurring migratory species. The EU Commission requires information on each site to be compiled in the form of a Standard Data Form.
This dataset is updated every time a new or amended batch of information is submitted to the EU Commission. It is an archived data series form August 2009 to July 2015). Note that Gibraltar information is not included in this spreadsheet. Please note that this information was superceded in December 2015 by a spreadsheet that contains information for both SACs and also SPAs - in other words for the whole Natura 2000 network. This dataset is entitled "Natura 2000 all site details"
The information provided here, follows the officially agreed site information format for Natura 2000 sites, as set out in the Official Journal of the European Union recording the Commission Implementing Decision of 11 July 2011 (2011/484/EU).
The content matches exactly the data submitted to the European Commission. Further technical documentation may be found here
http://bd.eionet.europa.eu/activities/Natura_2000/reference_portal
More general information on Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) in the United Kingdom is available from the SAC home page on the JNCC website. http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=23. This webpage also provides links to Standard Data Forms for all SACs in the UK.
this sheet is organised in a series of tabs - corresponding to different sections of the standard data form. All sheets are filterable by Country codes - (E, S, W, NI and OF for offshore). Cross border sites take the first letter of each country code eg EW for England Wales, SO for Scotland/Offshore.
The tabs are:
*SPA Site details - one row per site, containing basic site details.
*Bird data submitted to the EU - species listed in section 3.2 of the standard data form and also bird assemblages identified in section 4.2
*SPA Maps - a facility to produce simple dot maps of sites
*SPA Habitat classes
*Bird data assemblages
*SPA Physical site characteristics (pre 2013 versions of this spreadshet only - from 2013 these details are integrated into a column on the site details table).