Protected areas data for South East River Basin District

There are many areas where the water environment is especially valued. These areas include rare wildlife habitats, bathing waters and areas where drinking water is abstracted. These areas are known as protected areas and their uses are given particular legal protection.

For more information on protected areas, see the Current condition and environmental objectives document. An explanation of terms is in the glossary.

You can see protected area maps on the river basin management plan map viewer.

Drinking water protected areas current status and at risk

Water body type	Number of drinking water protected areas	Number ‘at risk’	Number at poor chemical status for drinking water protected area objectives
Surface water	16	13	Does not apply to surface waters
Groundwater	33	14	14

Shellfish water protected areas current status and objectives

Number of shellfish waters	Objective	Number currently achieving standard	Number not sampled due to lack of commercial activity
23	Endeavour to observe the Shellfish Directions standard of ≤300 E.coli/100ml shellfish flesh and intravalvular liquid	2	10

Bathing water protected areas current status and objectives

Number of bathing waters	Objective	Number which met at least the sufficient classification in 2021	Number expected to achieve at least sufficient in 2022	Number at risk of not achieving sufficient in 2022
81	At least sufficient classification	80	78	2

There are 1 unassessed bathing waters

Nutrient sensitive areas (nitrate vulnerable zones)

Reason for designation	Number of NVZs	Land area (ha) covered by NVZ type	% of river basin district covered by NVZ type
High nitrates in surface waters	38	231,636	23
High nitrates in groundwater	14	285,798	28
Eutrophication in lakes or reservoirs	1	1,109	0
Eutrophication in estuaries and coastal waters	3	253,792	25

Nutrient sensitive areas (Urban Waste Water Treatment Regulations)

Reason for designation	Number of Sensitive areas	Length (KM)/Area (km2) designated
Eutrophication in rivers	13	266
Eutrophication in estuaries or coastal waters	7	74.14
Eutrophication in lakes or reservoirs	1	0.64

Habitats site (European site) protected areas*

Site type	Number of sites
Ramsar Site	11
Special Area of Conservation	18
Special Protection Area	11

Condition of underlying water-dependent Site of Special Scientific Interest units**

RBMP water-dependent condition	Unit area (ha)	% of total unit area
RBMP-Favourable (Compliant)	14,750	43.7
RBMP-Unfavourable - Recovering	13,251	39.2
RBMP-Unfavourable - No change	5,580	16.5
RBMP-Unfavourable - Declining	198	0.6
RBMP-Partially destroyed	0	0.0
RBMP-Destroyed	0	0.0
RBMP-Not Recorded	0	0.0

Download European Sites target data

*Ramsar sites are not protected areas under the Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) Regulations 2017. However they are treated in line with Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and Special Protection Areas (SPA) as a matter of Government policy. Most Ramsar sites coincide with SACs and/or SPAs, but a small number are designated as Ramsar sites only. These are included in the water-dependent site condition data.

**Includes SSSI units underlying European sites and Ramsar sites where the habitat is water-dependent. The "RBMP-favourable" category in these tables includes units where any reasons for not being in "favourable condition", as far as can be ascertained, do not relate to the water-dependent features. As a result, all condition categories have the prefix "RBMP" to distinguish these from conventional SSSI condition reporting, in which pressures not relevant to river basin planning are included in determining site condition. Data retrieved 2019. Methodology changes mean this data does not form a continuous series with data reported in 2015.

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