Water Framework Directive (WFD) River Basin Districts Cycle 3

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

This is a polygon dataset showing River Basin Districts, created to meet the requirements of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). River Basin Districts are large reporting units containing multiple water bodies.

River Basin Districts are the largest reporting units under the WFD, and each will contain many Management Catchments.

The WFD defines River Basin Districts as '…the area of land and sea, made up of one or more neighbouring river basins together with their associated groundwaters and coastal waters…'. River Basin Districts have been delineated by using River Catchments as “building blocks” that have been aggregated together within a GIS, ensuring that WFD rivers do not intersect boundaries. Coastal and transitional water bodies are also merged and assigned to a River Basin District.

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 WFDRiverBasinDistrictsCycle_3.lyrx.

Please note that there are limitations with the shapefile format of the data. The data applies to Cycle 3 of the WFD. Attribution statement: © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2024. All rights reserved.

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Data links

Link to the data Format File added Data preview
WFD_River_Basin_Districts_Cycle_3.lyrx N/A 07 April 2026 Not available
Water_Framework_Directive_WFD_River_Basin_Districts_Cycle_3.shp.zip ZIP 07 April 2026 Not available
Water_Framework_Directive_WFD_River_Basin_Districts_Cycle_3.gpkg.zip ZIP 07 April 2026 Not available
Water_Framework_Directive_WFD_River_Basin_Districts_Cycle_3.geojson.zip ZIP 07 April 2026 Not available
Water_Framework_Directive_WFD_River_Basin_Districts_Cycle_3.gdb.zip ZIP 07 April 2026 Not available

Additional information

View additional metadata
Added to data.gov.uk
2025-06-23
Access contraints
There are no public access constraints to this data. Use of this data is subject to the licence identified.
Harvest GUID
dad2d5be-22af-4bae-ab09-5e741b9db69c
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
2024-03-01 (creation)
2025-06-23 (publication)
2024-03-01 (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