Finding a site on MAGIC and exporting the evidence

MAGIC is the fastest way to find out what is designated on or near a site, and the easiest way to lose an argument later if you cite it carelessly. The Defra MAGIC map at magic.defra.gov.uk pulls designation layers from several public bodies into one viewer, free and with no login. For an early constraints appraisal it will tell you inside ten minutes whether a site sits within a Site of Special Scientific Interest, inside a National Landscape, on ancient woodland, or next door to a scheduled monument. What it will not do is settle a boundary.

What MAGIC aggregates and who publishes each layer

MAGIC stands for Multi-Agency Geographic Information for the Countryside. Natural England runs it for Defra, and the operative word is multi-agency. Almost nothing on the map originates with the viewer itself.

Habitat, species and protected site layers come from Natural England. Ancient woodland comes from the inventory maintained by Natural England with the Forestry Commission. Scheduled monuments, listed buildings, registered parks and gardens and World Heritage Sites come from Historic England. Flood zones and main river lines come from the Environment Agency. Agricultural land classification comes from the old survey archive now held by Natural England.

That provenance is the whole point when a case officer queries your appraisal. The answer is never "it was on MAGIC". The answer is that Natural England's SSSI layer, viewed on a stated date, shows the nearest unit 340 metres north-east of the red line.

Locating the site accurately

The search box takes a postcode, a place name, a grid reference or a coordinate pair. Use the grid reference where you can.

Postcode centroids are the usual source of error. A rural postcode can cover a long lane and several holdings, so the pin can land a field away from the parcel you care about. Take a British National Grid reference from the centre of your red line, type it in, then check the position against the aerial basemap before you record anything.

Zoom in hard. The temptation is to judge a designation boundary at a scale where a 10 metre offset is invisible, and that offset is exactly what a consultee will challenge if the site abuts a designation rather than sitting inside one.

The designations worth switching on first

For a first pass on an English site, these layers earn their place before any of the agri-environment or marine ones.

The SSSI Impact Risk Zone layer is the one most often missed. It is not a distance buffer. It is a set of polygons that tell you which categories of development trigger consultation with Natural England, so a site 2 kilometres from the designation can still fall inside a zone for, say, residential development of a given size. Read the zone attributes rather than the colour.

If the habitat layers are doing real work in your assessment, the underlying inventories deserve a closer look than the viewer gives them, and our note on reading habitat inventories and their classification data goes into how those polygons are compiled.

Measuring distances properly

MAGIC has a measuring tool. Use it from the nearest point of the application boundary, not from the building, and say in your text which point you measured from.

Two habits save trouble later. Record the bearing as well as the distance, because "180 metres" without a direction invites a consultee to measure something else. And measure to the designation as drawn, then note whether the drawn boundary follows a physical feature on the imagery. Where a boundary follows a hedge or a watercourse you can rely on it reasonably well. Where it cuts across an open field in a straight line, treat it as approximate.

Exporting a map you can put in an appendix

The viewer will produce a map export with a title, a legend, a scale bar and a north arrow. A screenshot will not, which is why screenshots look amateur in an appendix and why officers sometimes ask for the map again.

1. Zoom to a scale that shows the red line and the nearest relevant designation together.
2. Switch off every layer you are not relying on, so the legend stays readable.
3. Give the map a title that names the site and the layer being shown.
4. Check the legend lists each visible layer and that the scale bar is present.
5. Export, then save the file with the date of viewing in the filename.

One map per issue beats one map with eleven layers. A heritage figure showing listed buildings and the scheduled monument, a separate ecology figure showing the SSSI and priority habitat, a separate flood figure if you are not using the Flood Map for Planning. The reader should be able to see what each figure is for without reading the caption twice.

Recording the date and the layer version

Designation data changes. New SSSI units are notified, listing decisions are made, inventory polygons are corrected. A constraints appraisal that says only "source: MAGIC" cannot be reproduced by anyone.

Record four things for every layer you rely on: the layer name as MAGIC gives it, the publishing body, the date you viewed it, and the dataset update date from the layer metadata where one is shown. Put that in a short table at the front of the appendix. It takes five minutes and it answers the question an inspector asks at an inquiry, which is whether the evidence was current when the application was made. The same discipline applies to any dataset with versions, as with the biodiversity metric and its version control.

Where MAGIC is not the definitive source

This is the part that gets people into trouble, because the viewer is good enough to feel authoritative.

Listed buildings are definitive on the National Heritage List for England, which gives the list entry number, the grade and the list entry description. Cite the list entry, not the dot on the map. Flood zones for a planning application come from the Flood Map for Planning, and where you are preparing a Flood Risk Assessment that service is the one to quote. Tree Preservation Orders and conservation area boundaries are held by the local planning authority, and only some are published as open data. Public rights of way are held on the definitive map and statement by the surveying authority, which is a legal record MAGIC does not reproduce, and the practical route to it is set out in our guide to checking rights of way on the definitive map.

Ancient woodland is the subtlest case. The inventory was compiled at a mapping scale that was never intended to fix a boundary on the ground, so an inventory edge is a prompt to survey rather than a line to design to.

Use MAGIC for scoping, for early risk, and for the figure that shows a decision-maker where the site sits. Then go to the register that holds the designation and cite that.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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