Key information and data limitations for Analysis Ready Data (ARD) being published by Defra’s Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) programme in December 2025. Users should ensure they have read this ARD Limitations Statement and the supporting documentation provided with each catalog/data-sets before viewing or making use of the data.
The NCEA programme is delivering a nationwide survey of England’s land, freshwater assets and coast, mapping the location, extent, and condition of our ecosystems. It is a Defra-led programme, working in partnership with 5 of its arms-length bodies: the Environment Agency (EA), Forest Research (FR), Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), Natural England (NE) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew).
NCEA is transforming environmental decision making in England through generating a ‘whole system’ picture of the state of our natural environment. Data is collected from a stratified random sample of locations to provide a representative and unbiased view of England’s natural capital assets over a multi-year survey. The full survey must be completed for the catalog/data-sets to be fully representative and suitable for its intended purpose. The NCEA programme is currently publishing data collected from the preparation year (2022/23) and first full year of data collection (2023/24) ). It will publish data collected in 24/25 and 25/26 next financial year and then publish annually the data collected in the previous year until the programme closes in 2028/29.