Registration for offshore licensing

The Crown Estate periodically runs new structured leasing/licensing processes for distinct parts of its offshore Marine business.

Sharing information

The Crown Estate wants to better understand the interactions that proposed areas for lease/license have with other marine users or interests and to share that information with any applicant seeking development rights. We engage with stakeholders as part of new structured leasing/licensing processes so marine organisations can share new information to inform both applicants and ourselves about proposed sites.

We automatically involve some statutory organisations (such as marine planning authorities, marine licence regulators and statutory nature conservation bodies) in this process.

Approach to the award of seabed rights

The Crown Estate is not the regulator which will grant statutory planning consent for site development. We therefore cannot pre-judge the outcome of the statutory planning process.

The seabed rights awarded through new leasing processes will be for preliminary rights. Development of projects within areas bid for are still subject to the statutory planning process, with full leases/licences for site development only being issued by The Crown Estate subject to all necessary statutory consents being granted.  

Do you need to register?

The below groups different organisations and confirms how and when we will engage with them at different stages of all new offshore leasing/licensing processes.

Government & Regulators

UK and Devolved Government Departments (marine and energy); Marine Licence Regulators; Statutory Marine Planners

We are committed to engaging fully with Government and Regulators when it comes to developing programmes of work; sharing our engagement plans and discussing our decision-making processes with them.

Government and Regulatory organisations do not need to register their details with us; we will automatically include you in engagement activity we carry out.

Statutory Organisations

We will engage statutory organisations when proposed sites are available for discussion. We will actively seek information on those sites as part of our decision-making process and will feed back outcomes to this group.

Statutory organisations are not required to register their details; we will make contact automatically.

If you wish to update individual contact details please email us at:

Interested Organisations

This group includes those organisations that have registered with us as having an interest in being informed about our activities on the seabed.

Organisations in this group will receive email updates related to any new leasing/licensing, progress and next steps during the site award process, and any press releases.

Interested organisations are required to register their details with us to be included in engagement activity. Please complete and return the Stakeholder engagement registration form below.

By submitting a registration form, you confirm that you have agreed to our website terms of use and our privacy policy which you can access via the footer at the bottom of this page.

The Crown Estate holds confidentiality agreements with some organisations who are able to share data with us, and who have no commercial interest in the information, for example non-governmental organisations (NGOs). We will engage with this group at the stage in each process when proposals/bids for sites are available for discussion, and pass on any information shared to developers who are awarded sites to assist in their consenting process.

Privacy statement

We will keep a record of your contact details you provide to keep you updated on our offshore (marine) activities only. We will not share your personal data with any other third party unless you have given us your express permission to do so. Should you wish to be removed from our mailing list please contact us at any time at: