There are approximately 2.6 million agricultural land parcels in England, and the Parcel Points (England) point dataset represents the approximate centres, or centroids of these parcels. The number of agricultural parcels varies over time as fields are split or joined consequently creating new fields with new centroids. Some parcels may be sold for development and are no longer available for agricultural use, occasionally land that was previously developed may return to agriculture, e.g. disused airfields.
Parcel Points is a simple point dataset that uses the centres of agricultural parcels attributed only with the parcel reference ID.
Users can use the data as supplied or attach their own attributes. When viewed overlying other publicly available data, e.g. satellite imagery (Google earth), OS open data, OpenStreetMap, etc. that may feature agricultural land the points provide a useful reference point to identify the approximate centre of agricultural parcels.
Parcel Points uses the Open Government Licence v3.0 as used by other publicly accessible data on the Defra Data Services Platform and will be updated every 6 months.
Coverage will be for agricultural land parcels in England only and will be available as national coverage and also split into the Ordnance Survey Ceremonial Counties in a similar approach to that applied to the RPA’s Crop Map of England product where each county is given a three letter code. Attribution statement: © Rural Payments Agency