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Metadata: 2025, Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, Marine Internships, Optimising Value of Scour and Cable Protection
Abstract:
This project was hosted by Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust with the help of the partner organisations, The Crown Estate, Ørsted and Natural England. One third of United Kingdom (UK) offshore wind farms (OWFs) will reach the end of their operational life by 2035, meaning that greater consideration must now be given to decommissioning. Concerns have been raised surrounding the feasibility of current decommissioning processes, particularly regarding the removal of scour and cable protection, and there remains a lack of a robust evidence base to guide best practice. Current policy expectations require full removal of scour and cable protection. However, there are growing calls for alternative approaches, including partial removal and full retention, which may deliver the greatest holistic value for both the environment and society. To explore this issue, the project adopted a stakeholder engagement approach involving developers, marine consultancies, conservation charities, and governmental bodies to investigate value creation opportunities. Stakeholder input revealed that the development of a more adaptable, context specific framework for decommissioning could potentially support equitable benefit sharing and biodiversity gains. However, the current rigidity of decommissioning frameworks and additional barriers deter innovative approaches from being realised. In response, this report provides a decommissioning decision tree framework considering the merits of different decommissioning approaches across different contexts. To ensure that the decision trees are applicable to real-world scenarios, key barriers have been identified, and recommendations have been put forward to address challenges. For decision trees to be ready for policy application, further research is required to explore how value creation options from alternative decommissioning options can be made viable. In addition, stakeholder collaboration is needed to establish common ground earlier in the leasing process. Overall, this report highlights how value creation opportunities could be supported and developed to become practical solutions.
Data holder:
The Crown Estate
| Other details | ||
| Internal code | Internally assigned metadata identifier | 19325 |
| Title | The title is used to provide a brief and precise description of the dataset such as 'Date', 'Originating organisation/programme', 'Location' and 'Type of survey'. All acronyms and abbreviations should be reproduced in full. | 2025, Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, Marine Internships, Optimising Value of Scour and Cable Protection |
| File Identifier | The File Identifier is a code, preferably a GUID, that is globally unique and remains with the same metadata record even if the record is edited or transferred between portals or tools. | a5a2cd0f-047c-4f22-975a-2e96ef6a3090 |
| Resource Identifier | This is the code assigned by the data owner. | TCE-4457 |
| Resource type | The resource type will likely be a dataset but could also be a series (collection of datasets with a common specification) or a service. | series |
| Start date | This describes the date the resource starts. This may only be the year if month and day are not known | 2025-06-15 |
| End date | This describes the date the resource ends. This may only be the year if month and day are not known | 2025-12-24 |
| Frequency of updates | This describes the frequency with which the resource is modified or updated i.e. a monitoring programme that samples once per year has a frequency that is described as 'annually'. | notPlanned |
| Abstract | The abstract provides a clear and brief statement of the content of the resource. | This project was hosted by Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust with the help of the partner organisations, The Crown Estate, Ørsted and Natural England. One third of United Kingdom (UK) offshore wind farms (OWFs) will reach the end of their operational life by 2035, meaning that greater consideration must now be given to decommissioning. Concerns have been raised surrounding the feasibility of current decommissioning processes, particularly regarding the removal of scour and cable protection, and there remains a lack of a robust evidence base to guide best practice. Current policy expectations require full removal of scour and cable protection. However, there are growing calls for alternative approaches, including partial removal and full retention, which may deliver the greatest holistic value for both the environment and society. To explore this issue, the project adopted a stakeholder engagement approach involving developers, marine consultancies, conservation charities, and governmental bodies to investigate value creation opportunities. Stakeholder input revealed that the development of a more adaptable, context specific framework for decommissioning could potentially support equitable benefit sharing and biodiversity gains. However, the current rigidity of decommissioning frameworks and additional barriers deter innovative approaches from being realised. In response, this report provides a decommissioning decision tree framework considering the merits of different decommissioning approaches across different contexts. To ensure that the decision trees are applicable to real-world scenarios, key barriers have been identified, and recommendations have been put forward to address challenges. For decision trees to be ready for policy application, further research is required to explore how value creation options from alternative decommissioning options can be made viable. In addition, stakeholder collaboration is needed to establish common ground earlier in the leasing process. Overall, this report highlights how value creation opportunities could be supported and developed to become practical solutions. |
| Lineage | Lineage includes the background information, history of the sources of data, data quality statements and methods. | 3.1 Stakeholder Identification & Methods Prior to formal interviewing, a series of one-to-one conversations were held to identify relevant organisations and individuals for the interview stage. A range of organisations and roles were prioritised to ensure findings provided a rounded reflection of the current state of OWFs. During September 2025, a total of 11 virtual interviews with 17 participants were conducted across six organisations, including developers, regulators, environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), landowners and consultants. Certain organisations were interviewed multiple times; this was done to ensure representation of several key roles within these organisations. In some cases, organisations were contacted but declined to participate. Interviews were semi-structured, allowing for wider topics to be covered where relevant with questions provided in advance to allow participants time to prepare. The interviews were also automatically transcribed to promote open dialogue and enable accurate post-interview summaries, which were shared and approved (when requested) by respective organisations. To protect privacy, all responses have been anonymised. Some individuals were asked questions specific to their roles to gain detailed understanding of certain topics. Some responses have not been included in this report to respect anonymity or because they were deemed not relevant to the report’s scope. |
| Related keywords | ||
| Keyword | General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Biodiversity indices |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Engineering parameters | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Energy resources | |
| Geographical coverage | ||
| North | The northern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 60 |
| East | The eastern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 5 |
| South | The southern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 49 |
| West | The western-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | -10 |
| Responsible organisations | ||
| Role | The point of contact is person or organisation with responsibility for the creation and maintenance of the metadata for the resource. | pointOfContact |
| Organisation name | Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust | |
| tsmalley@lincstrust.co.uk | ||
| Role | The custodian is the person or organisation that accepts responsibility for the resource and ensures appropriate care and maintenance. If a dataset has been lodged with a Data Archive Centre for maintenance then this organisation is be entered here. | custodian |
| Organisation name | The Crown Estate | |
| Phone | +44 020 7851 5000 | |
| enquiries@thecrownestate.co.uk | ||
| Role | The originator is the person or organisation who created, collected or produced the resource. | originator |
| Organisation name | Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust | |
| tsmalley@lincstrust.co.uk | ||
| Role | The distributor is the person or organisation that distributes the resource. | distributor |
| Organisation name | The Crown Estate | |
| Phone | +44 020 7851 5000 | |
| enquiries@thecrownestate.co.uk | ||
| Role | The owner is the person or organisation that owns the resource. | owner |
| Organisation name | Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust | |
| tsmalley@lincstrust.co.uk | ||
| Resource locators | ||
| Locator URL | Web address (URL) that links to the resource | https://www.marinedataexchange.co.uk/details/TCE-4457/summary |
| Web address (URL) that links to the resource | https://www.marinedataexchange.co.uk | |
| Dataset constraints | ||
| 20.1 Limitations on Public Access - Access constraints | This states `otherRestrictions` from ISO vocabulary RestrictionCode and is an INSPIRE/GEMINI requirement. | otherRestrictions |
| 20.2 Limitations on Public Access - Other constraints | The Deliverables must be used in accordance with the Marine Data Exchange's Terms of Use | |
| 21.1 Conditions for Access and Use - Use constraints | This states `otherRestrictions` from ISO vocabulary RestrictionCode and is an INSPIRE/GEMINI requirement. | otherRestrictions |
| 21.2 Conditions for Access and Use - Other constraints | This states any constraints on use of the data. Multiple conditions can be recorded for different parts of the data resource. If no conditions apply, then `No condtions apply` is recorded. This uses free text. | The Deliverables must be used in accordance with the Marine Data Exchange's Terms of Use |
| Version info | ||
| Date of publication | The publication date of the resource or if previously unpublished the date that the resource was made publicly available via the MEDIN network. | 2026-01-05 |
| Harvest date | The date which this record has been (re)harvested from the provider. | 2026-04-12 |
| Metadata date | The date when the content of this metadata record was last updated. | 2026-01-05 |
| Metadata standard name | The name of the metadata standard used to create this metadata | MEDIN |
| Metadata standard version | The version of the MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard used to create the metadata record | 3.1.2 |