dataset · England
Agricultural Land Classification (ALC) Grades - Post 1988 Survey (polygons)
Agricultural Land Classification Grade and Job number for post-1988 ALC surveys for England Only. Polygons showing 5 classes of agricultural land plus classifications for urban and non-agricultural land. Grade one is best quality and grade five is poorest quality. A number of consistent criteria were used for assessment which include climate (temperature, rainfall, aspect, exposure, frost risk), site (gradient, micro-relief, flood risk) and soil (depth, structure, texture, chemicals, stoniness).
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Licence: ["There are no public access constraints to this data. Use of this data is subject to the licence identified.", "There are no public access constraints to this data. Use of this data is subject to the
Evidence quality: 57
Listed in data.gov.uk public catalogue API on 2026-10-16; relevance/value screened (haiku).
Metadata checked: 2026-10-14T13:20:00.000Z
What's in it
- Data offered docs-verified
- Agricultural Land Classification (ALC) grade polygons, 5 classes (grade 1 best to grade 5 poorest) · Job number for each post-1988 ALC survey · Classifications for urban and non-agricultural land
- Coverage docs-verified
- England · post-1988 ALC surveys
- Update frequency docs-verified
- not planned (no scheduled updates)
- Formats docs-verified
- GeoPackage (ZIP) · Shapefile (ZIP) · GeoJSON (ZIP) · File Geodatabase (ZIP) · OGC API - Features · WFS · WMS · ESRI REST Feature Service
- Access docs-verified
- Free and open; Open Government Licence v3.0; no authentication
Useful for
- Use cases llm-inferred
- Screen a development site boundary for best and most versatile agricultural land (grades 1-3a) in a planning or EIA desk study · Map agricultural land quality within a solar, grid or linear infrastructure corridor for a land-take assessment · Overlay ALC grades with drainage or SuDS layouts to flag agricultural land loss in a drainage strategy
- Audience llm-inferred
- planners · environmental consultants · GIS analysts · land agents
Limitations
- Constraints llm-inferred
- England only; no coverage of Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland · Post-1988 surveys only; areas without a post-1988 survey are not represented, and the docs do not state survey dates per polygon · No planned updates; dataset reference dates are 2000-07-07 (creation) and 2015-02-25 (publication), so grades may be out of date · Polygon-level data with no stated mapping scale or minimum mapping unit; not suitable for field-scale decisions without ground verification · Licence text in the entry metadata is truncated; check the full licence before reuse
Evidence
- https://environment.data.gov.uk/api/file/download?fileDataSetId=fcb11d52-2cc9-4930-b8a7-8b07c2154407&fileName=Agricultural_Land_Classification_ALC_Grades_Post_1988_Survey_polygons.gdb.zip
- https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/c002ceea-d650-4408-b302-939e9b88eb0b/agricultural-land-classification-alc-grades-post-1988-survey-polygons1
Check upstream coverage, uncertainty and licence before use. Station observations are not forecasts or design levels.