dataset · England
Provisional Agricultural Land Classification (ALC)
Provisional Agricultural Land Classification Grade. Agricultural land classified into five grades. Grade one is best quality and grade five is poorest quality. A number of consistent criteria 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) for England only. Digitised from the published 1:250,000 map which was in turn compiled from the 1 inch to the
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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
- Provisional Agricultural Land Classification (ALC) grade, five grades (grade 1 best, grade 5 poorest)
- Coverage docs-verified
- England
- Resolution docs-verified
- Digitised from a published 1:250,000 source map (map scale only; no explicit spatial resolution stated)
- Update frequency docs-verified
- Not planned (metadata frequency: notPlanned)
- Formats docs-verified
- Shapefile (ZIP) · GeoPackage (ZIP) · File Geodatabase (ZIP) · GeoJSON (ZIP) · OGC API - Features · WFS · WMS
- Access docs-verified
- Free and open, no API key or auth listed; no public access constraints; use subject to the Open Government Licence
Useful for
- Use cases llm-inferred
- Screening development sites for agricultural land quality as a planning constraint · Land-take assessment for EIA or planning applications, overlaid with flood risk and gradient layers · Baseline soil and land-quality context for rural drainage or SuDS siting in England
- Audience llm-inferred
- planning consultants · environmental consultants · GIS analysts · civils and water engineers (site constraints)
Limitations
- Constraints llm-inferred
- England only · Provisional grading digitised from a 1:250,000 map, so coarse for site-scale decisions · Update frequency not planned; dataset revision date 2019-02-15 · Attribution statement required (Natural England and Ordnance Survey)
Evidence
- https://environment.data.gov.uk/api/file/download?fileDataSetId=f33896b6-9847-4f03-b5d9-3c55497a003c&fileName=Agricultural_Land_Classification_Provisional_England.lyr
- https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/952421ec-da63-4569-817d-4d6399df40a1/provisional-agricultural-land-classification-alc2
Check upstream coverage, uncertainty and licence before use. Station observations are not forecasts or design levels.