Protected areas data for Anglian 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	37	31	Does not apply to surface waters
Groundwater	31	15	9

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
22	Endeavour to observe the Shellfish Directions standard of ≤300 E.coli/100ml shellfish flesh and intravalvular liquid	5	2

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
39	At least sufficient classification	38	37	2

There are 0 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	79	2,077,758	75
High nitrates in groundwater	21	1,340,876	48
Eutrophication in lakes or reservoirs	11	189,319	7

Nutrient sensitive areas (Urban Waste Water Treatment Regulations)

Reason for designation	Number of Sensitive areas	Length (KM)/Area (km2) designated
Eutrophication in rivers	24	1483
Eutrophication in lakes or reservoirs	13	33.56
High nitrate in surface fresh water	7	580

Habitats site (European site) protected areas*

Site type	Number of sites
Ramsar Site	28
Special Area of Conservation	26
Special Protection Area	26

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)	72,509	74.7
RBMP-Unfavourable - Recovering	19,256	19.8
RBMP-Unfavourable - No change	3,373	3.5
RBMP-Unfavourable - Declining	1,922	2.0
RBMP-Partially destroyed	5	0.0
RBMP-Destroyed	8	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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