Marine plan areas
The Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 divides the UK marine areas into marine planning regions with an associated plan authority who prepares a marine plan for the area. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the devolved administrations are the planning authorities and in England, we are the planning authority.
In England, our inshore and offshore waters have been split into 11 plan areas. A high resolution map (PDF 6.7 MB) is available. Please note that on the map, there are 10 plan areas with the North West area shown as a single area, divided by a dashed line to reflect the recommendation by stakeholders that the inshore and offshore areas are prepared under a single process and one plan is produced representing both areas.
This map is indicative only and boundaries are subject to change as plan making starts in each area. The boundaries have recently been scrutinised to make sure they are in line with the rules set out in the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and, following advice from ours and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' legal teams, the boundaries for the plan areas have been changed to align with the outer limit of the Renewable Energy Zone – this is particularly the case in the South West and South areas.
Shapefiles (Zip file 7.2 MB) for all marine plan areas are available, including two types of metadata and our terms of use. All seven of the other files must be extracted for the files to work correctly.
We will be producing marine plans for all plan areas and aim to deliver two plans every two years.
We are also working with the remaining plan areas to begin gathering evidence and data for future plan making. We also want to work with interested stakeholders at the earliest opportunity to best prepare for future plan making. Where there is not currently a marine plan, the Marine Policy Statement will be the framework for decision making on licensing applications. We have dedicated staff within the marine planning team to focus on this area of work and keep you updated with the marine planning process. Please follow the link to learn more about future plan making areas.
Contains Ordnance Survey and UK Hydrographic Office data © Crown copyright and database right 2012. Marine Management Organisation.
Contact information
Marine Planning Team
Marine Management Organisation
Lancaster House
Hampshire Court
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE4 7YH
Tel: 0191 376 2790
Email: planning@
marinemanagement.org.uk
Help with documents
Some of these documents are in the portable document format (PDF) for downloading. Adobe Acrobat Reader can be freely downloaded from www.adobe.com/uk/