Chapter 7 - Sustainable Development, Military Aid to the Civil Authorities and Conflict Prevention
                     
Table 7.5 Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Target Condition
Target:

England - 95% of SSSI to be in target condition by 2010;
Scotland - 95% of SSSI to be in target condition by 2010;
Wales - 85% of SSSI to be in target condition by 2013;
Northern Ireland - 95% of ASSI1 to be in target condition by 2013

 'Target condition' means a site is in favourable or unfavourable-recovering condition.
Data for different countries should not be compared due to different counting methods. For the same reason it is not possible to provide an overall UK figure.
SSSIs in England are calculated by area after Natural England undertook a project to unitise all the English SSSIs, allowing them to inform the MOD of the exact SSSI area that the MOD manage.
Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland assess the overall SSSI condition by interest feature rather than by area. As SSSIs are often sizeable, MOD may not own complete SSSIs but share the responsibility with several landowners. MOD can therefore only report on these countries by feature. The statutory nature conservation bodies2 (Natural England, Countryside Council for Wales, Scottish Natural Heritage and Northern Ireland Environment Agency) have rolling six-year assessment programmes, so may not have assessed sites recently. For details of assessment criteria, please refer to the relevant statutory nature conservation body.

The data in this table are not National Statistics because they have not been assessed as such by the UK Statistics Authority.
Percentage of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Target Condition
  2004/05   2005/06   2006/07   2007/08   2008/09  
England 73   78   81   85   92  
Scotland 76   68   68   68   68  
Wales 68   75   75   77   78  
Northern Ireland 60   57   57   57   57  
Source: Defence Estates
1. Area of Special Scientific Interest (Northern Ireland only).
2. The statutory nature conservation bodies' websites are:
    Natural England: www.naturalengland.gov.uk/
    Countryside Council for Wales: www.ccw.gov.uk/
    Scottish Natural Heritage: www.snh.org.uk/
    Northern Ireland Environment Agency: www.ni-environment.gov.uk
 
SSSI Condition 2009
Hectares  
As at 1 Apr 2009 Number of SSSIs   Area in
target condition		   Area not in
target condition		   Total area      
England 128   65 503   6 077   71 580  
                 
Number  
  Number of SSSIs   Features in
target condition		   Features not in
target condition		   Total assessed
features		  
Scotland 23   125   60   185  
Wales 19   52   15   67  
Northern Ireland 2   4   3   7