Natura 2000 designation type

Designated type information for each Natura 2000 site (SAC and SPA). Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) are strictly protected sites designated under the EC Habitats Directive. Special Protection Areas (SPA) are classified under the EC Birds Directive. This dataset is derived from the UK wide data submitted to the EU Commmission as part of the Standard Data Form updating exercise on 22 December 2015 (Tranche 50) . It contains details for both SACs and SPAs - there is one row in the dataset for each combination of individual site and designation type. Designation types included in this dataset are *Site of Special Scientific Interest (UK) (known as Areas of Special Scientific Interest in Northern Ireland). *National Nature Reserves *Marine Nature Reserves (note that this designation has been largely superceded by other types of marine site designation) This field on the Standard Data Form is for National as opposed to internationally recognized protected area designation types. It is possible that at some future date this range of designations might be increased but note that as at Jan 2016, this field is not an obligatory field within the Standard Data form. This dataset relates to section 5.1 of the Standard Data form Archived versions of this dataset are also available as part of a time series. These may be useful in determining how many sites there were at a given point of time, and also how some of the detailed information might have changed over time. Each archived version corresponds to a European submission. A record of the changes made at each submisison is shown here. http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-1488