This is a polygon dataset showing Water Framework Directive (WFD) River Water Body Catchments. The catchments are associated with a single river water body.
This dataset also contains coastal catchments which are the areas of land that drain to coastal waters without passing through a defined WFD River Water Body. Coastal catchments usually include small streams with catchments less than 10km2, and all beaches.
This dataset provides attribution relating to the 2025 classification results, as well as other relevant information and data about each river water body.
Catchments are defined as an area of land from which all surface run-off flows through a series of streams, rivers, and possibly lakes, to a particular point in the watercourse such as a river confluence.
This data also contains areas of land which drain directly to coastal or estuarine waters, rather than through a river water body. In these scenarios, the field in the dataset called 'water_body_id' is set to a number, and the field in the dataset called 'water_body_type' is set to 'Coastal Catchment'.
Created using hydrological models based on EA LiDAR data informed with the Detailed River Network which has residual Ordnance Survey rights.
The geometry of this dataset has been simplified to allow for faster web mapping services. The full resolution of this dataset is called WFD River Water Body Catchments Cycle 4 Classification 2025 (Full Resolution).
There is a layer file associated with this dataset, which is called Simplified_WFD_River_Water_Body_Catchments_Cycle_4_Classification_2025.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.
