The Crown Estate

The Crown Estate is a £12bn independent business that compromises of assets in central London; strategically situated prime retail and leisure holdings; rural land (including agricultural) and the majority of the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland to the 12 nautical mile territorial limit. Established by an Act of Parliament, we return all our profit to the UK Treasury. This has totalled £2.6bn over the last ten years. Our vision is to be a progressive commercial business creating significant value beyond financial return. We will work with partners and stakeholders to grow our business, outperforming the market whilst delivering sustainable long-term returns.

Our responsibility of the Rural & Coastal and Energy, Minerals & Infrastructure (EMI) portfolios comprise virtually the entire seabed out to the 12 nautical mile territorial limit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, in addition to the sovereign rights to explore and make use of the natural resources of the continental shelf, with the exception of coal, oil and gas. We have responsibilities for just under half of the foreshore and beds of estuaries and tidal rivers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Crown Estate’s EMI activities are diverse and cover a number of business sectors. These include offshore wind developments, wave and tidal energy developments, aggregate dredging, cables and pipelines and other infrastructure. Our coastal activities are wide ranging and mainly comprise the leasing and licensing of land and coastal management, outfalls, aquaculture, moorings, jetties and other infrastructure.

Partnership working is important for us to address strategic issues across our marine activities and to look for better ways of working. Descriptions of some of our partnerships, with links to further information, are provided below.

• The Fisheries Liaison with Offshore Wind and Wet Renewables Group (FLOWW):this group was set up in 2002 to foster good relations between the fishing and offshore renewable energy sectors and to encourage co-existence of the industries.

• Offshore Renewables Joint Industry Programme (ORJIP)
  Offshore Wind: this partnership was set up in 2012 by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS – then DECC), The Crown Estate, Marine Scotland and 16 offshore wind developers. The aim is to reduce the consenting risk for offshore wind farm developments to better inform consenting authorities on the true environmental risk of offshore wind.
  Ocean Energy: a secretariat funded by programme sponsors (The Crown Estate, Marine Scotland, Welsh Government, Scottish Natural Heritage and Natural Resources Wales) was set up in 2016 to reduce consenting risk for wave, tidal stream and tidal range projects.

In addition, The Crown Estate manages the Marine Data Exchange (MDE). The MDE provides a platform to store, manage and share the data collected during the planning, building and operation of offshore renewable energy projects, offering anyone with an interest in the marine environment free access to information and data, helping to de-risk further investment offshore and open up value. This initiative is being expanded to the other sectors within the EMI portfolio.