The Environment Agency owns and maintains 42 ‘Class A’ strategic tide gauges, distributed around the UK coastline on behalf of the UK Coastal Flood Forecasting partnership. These are commonly referred to as the UKCFF tide gauges or UK National Tide Gauge Network (NTGN).

The network currently consists of 21 sites in England, 10 in Scotland, 7 in Wales, 2 in Northern Ireland, 1 in Jersey and 1 in the Isle of Man. The Environment Agency is responsible for and manages all gauges in the network.

Use of the data is not restricted to the operating authority boundary in which a gauge is located, for example both the Environment Agency (England) and Natural Resources Wales (Wales) use the Liverpool tide gauge data in delivering their forecasting services.

These tide gauges are of critical importance in providing flood forecasting, warning, modelling, mapping and operational activities. The primary use of the network is to support the operational flood forecasting activities of the UK Flood Forecasting Authorities. The gauges are used to:

• Provide a strategic overview of real time coastal conditions around the UK.

• Track the progress of coastal surge around the UK waters.

• Develop and calibrate the coastal surge model hosted by the Met Office.

• Produce high quality tide tables for key strategic locations in the UK for flood forecasting.

• Provide high quality archive data sets for use in coastal flood modelling and mapping applications and modelling of extreme sea levels.