Land data and digital tools for Net Zero, Nature and Society

For this project, Defra asked researchers from the University of the West of England to review data and digital tools relevant to land in England. To do this, the research team was granted access to anonymised responses from Defra’s 2025 Land Use Consultation.

The researchers categorised land data and digital tools mentioned by respondents into five functions: data, portals, maps, calculators and reporting. They find that data collected using public funds is mostly available for free to public sector organisations and researchers, but argue that there could be substantial economic and environmental benefits to making land data freely available to the public, business and NGOs.

Land Use Consultation responses provide strong evidence of potential public benefit to free public access to seven major land data sources:

• Land Registry ownership data
• Ordnance Survey maps
• Cranfield University’s National Soil Map
• UKCEH’s extensive data collection
• Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File
• Local Environmental Records Centres’ data and services
• Natural Environment Research Council Environmental Information Data Centre

These organisations do not readily disclose their revenue from data sales, but from what evidence we have been able collate in this report, we estimate revenues of £120 million to £200 million. Making these data services free would likely increase use, making hosting and maintenance even more important. There are potential economies of scale to centralising this data hosting and dissemination function. Removing paywalls may also simplify the administration required.

Data standards available for geospatial and environmental data are mature, but more widespread adoption in both the public and private sector would improve interoperability, innovation and user experience.

MAGIC is the industry standard mapping tool among many environmental professionals. When they ask for data to be made open access, they often phrase this as asking for a new layer on MAGIC. But users are frustrated and some argue the platform needs to be more useable and flexible.  MAGIC’s success uniting data from both government and third-party sources could make it a starting point for the one stop land data portal called for by many Land Use Consultation respondents.

Mapping tools and calculators serve different purposes for different audiences, so the current plethora of apps doesn’t necessarily need rationalising. But government standards can allow them to interface with regulatory frameworks.

Reporting tools have been very successful at improving biodiversity data through apps like iRecord and iNaturalist. This success could be imitated in food and farming, e.g. through APIs for RPA reporting and Defra surveys. This could allow integration with widely used land planning software like LandApp, improving response rates by reducing repeat data entry by farmers. Forest Research’s Forester app provides a Defra Group precedent, and AHDB’s Farm Data Exchange programme has already developed promising ideas.

We count at least 18 different portals for accessing land data in Defra Group alone. Differently curated data shopfronts are fine, but hosting land data in one place – potentially including third party data – would make it easier to build innovative digital tools.

Read the full report here.