Research preview

Get your range ready for the 2028 lead rules.

From April 2028, outdoor ranges can only keep using lead after cutting the environmental risk and filing a declaration. Range Mate handles the record-keeping, produces the declaration for you, and plans the maintenance that keeps your range ahead of it.

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Included with Range Mate · REACH tools for managed outdoor ranges, range management for indoor too · England, Wales & Scotland.

Range environmental profile 2 water features found
2 backstops 4 firing points River Pond

Fully integrated environmental data from official sources

What REACH asks

Do the work, and you carry on.

Lead isn't banned outright for ranges that put the work in. You reduce the risk, document it, declare it, and renew every three years.

April 2026

In force

The restriction is live in England, Scotland and Wales. Outdoor ranges get time to prepare.

April 2028

Declare by now

Keep using lead only if you've reduced the risk, documented it and filed your declaration. Submit before this date for no interruption.

Every 3 years

Renew

Re-submit at least every three years, or whenever your range changes, to stay on the public list.

This is lead bullets and slugs on ranges, not the separate clay and game shot ban from 2029.

Site mapping

Map the range once. The watercourses log themselves.

Draw your boundary, drop your backstops and firing points, then let Range Mate find the nearby water from official open data.

  • Draw each backstop's outline, or walk it and drop GPS points from your phone
  • Firing points, grazing areas and boundaries drawn on the same map
  • Nearby rivers, lakes, ditches and aquifers found for you
  • Grid references worked out automatically

It surfaces candidates for you to confirm. It speeds the legwork, it doesn't replace a site survey.

Nearby water features Found from open data
River, 180m north Environment Agency
Pond, on site DEFRA MAGIC
Drainage ditch, west boundary NRW
Source Protection Zone Confirm
The rest of the record

Everything the declaration needs.

Lead inventory, per backstop

A running estimate of the lead in each backstop, driven by your range usage. Log recoveries and waste off site, with hazardous codes flagged.

Maintenance planning

Cadences in months or rounds fired, like "de-lead the sand trap every 20,000 rounds per lane". One-click presets from the NRA Range Design & Safety Handbook, so you pick it, don't research it.

Risk measures

Record what's in place from a library of recognised measures: bunds, sand traps, vegetative cover and storage.

The declaration

Pre-filled and checked for completeness, then exported as a PDF and structured data, ready for you to submit.

Location & boundariesComplete
Soil & waterIn progress
Management of projectilesStarted
Declaration submitted Renewal tracked De-lead due in 4,200 rounds
Dashboard & renewals

A clock that never lets the renewal slip.

See every range at a glance, with its status and progress. Submit once and the three-year clock starts itself.

  • Club-wide dashboard across all your ranges
  • Due and overdue maintenance surfaced before it slips: amber means due, red means overdue
  • One-click evidence pack PDF, ready on request
  • Daily checks for overdue sampling and renewals
Range management

Not just REACH. And not just outdoor.

The records that build your declaration are the same ones that run your range day to day: every shoot, reclamation, sample, maintenance job and consignment on one timeline. Indoor ranges get the same tools, minus the declaration.

  • Every backstop on record: construction, lanes served, photos, its outline on the map
  • As much lane detail as you want: tag shoots to lanes, or let it estimate
  • Indoor presets too: ventilation servicing, dust-control checks, deep-clean cadences by usage
  • Built for the range, not the office: walk the bund, drop GPS points, camera-first photos

Every entry is logged to a named user, and once a declaration is submitted its evidence locks. The history an enforcing authority would want is tamper-evident by design.

Range timeline · 100yd outdoor All activity, one feed
Club shoot, 6 lanes, 1,840 rounds Today
De-lead sand trap due, backstop B 3 days
Lead reclamation, 212 kg recovered May
Water sample, north ditch Apr
Waste consignment, hazardous code logged Apr
Declaration submitted, evidence locked Mar
Scope

Is this you?

REACH applies to some ranges and not others. Here's where this module fits.

  • Outdoor ranges your club manages itself
  • England, Wales and Scotland
  • Lead bullets and slugs, not the clay and game shot ban
  • A record-keeping system, not a guarantee of compliance

The declaration, and any liability, stays with the range operator and its named responsible person.

Indoor range? The REACH declaration won't apply to you, but the same module gives you NRA-guided maintenance planning, lead tracking and waste records.

FAQ

Questions, answered.

Not if you do the work. For managed outdoor ranges there is a route to keep using lead projectiles: reduce the environmental risk so far as is reasonably practicable, document what you have done, and submit a declaration to your enforcing authority before 1 April 2028. Range Mate is built to make that record-keeping manageable so you can carry on shooting lead.
No. That is a separate restriction on lead shot for clay and game, coming in from 1 April 2029, and it has no manage-and-carry-on route. This module is only about lead projectiles, meaning bullets and slugs, on outdoor ranges. We keep the two apart deliberately.
Partly. The REACH restriction only applies to outdoor ranges your club manages, so the REACH tools, meaning site mapping, watercourse lookup, sampling and the declaration, only appear for those. Indoor ranges get the range-management side: NRA-guided maintenance planning, ventilation and dust-control checks, lead tracking in the bullet catcher, reclamation and waste records, and the range timeline. Ranges you don't manage, and Northern Ireland, are outside REACH scope.
No, and we would be wary of anyone who claims to. Range Mate is an evidence and record-keeping system. It helps you build, organise and produce the records and the declaration, but the legal declaration and any liability stay with you and your named responsible person. Always check your obligations against current NRA and enforcing-authority guidance.
Range Mate sets your enforcing authority automatically from where the range is: the Environment Agency in England, Natural Resources Wales in Wales, or SEPA in Scotland. You do not have to work it out.
Once you have drawn your range boundary, one click checks the relevant public environmental datasets and surfaces nearby rivers, lakes, ditches, aquifers and protected groundwater zones as candidates for you to confirm. It does the most laborious part of the site assessment for you, as far as the public data allows. Groundwater and drinking-water protection zones are covered across England, Wales and Scotland; automatic river and lake data currently comes from Environment Agency datasets, so it is England-only for now, with Welsh and Scottish sources on the roadmap. Private water supplies are not held in any public dataset, so those are added by you.
When you record a submission, Range Mate sets the three-year review date and tracks it on your dashboard, warning you as renewal approaches and flagging anything that lapses. A daily automated check picks up overdue sampling and approaching renewals, so it is not on you to remember.
Because the work takes time and the guidance is still settling. This is a research preview, built so clubs can start their evidence trail gradually rather than scrambling in 2028. There is no official online submission format published yet, so for now Range Mate gives you portable PDF and JSON exports you can submit yourself, with the JSON ready to map across the moment a format appears.
No. The module covers Great Britain only: England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland sits under separate rules and is not included.
It means the module is real and in clubs' hands, but still evolving quickly. Before using it, each user accepts research-preview terms in the app: features will change and improve as we learn from real ranges. Your records are not an experiment though. They are real, they are yours, and you can export them at any time. It is included with Range Mate at no extra cost.
The module is included with Range Mate at no extra cost, and it is in research preview now. Get in touch and we will switch it on for your club; each user then accepts the research-preview terms in the app before first use. Not on Range Mate yet? You will need a club account first, which is the same place all your membership, bookings and range records live.
Research preview

Get ahead of 2028.

It's included with Range Mate and in research preview now. Tell us about your range and we'll switch it on, so you can start the evidence trail today.

Join the research preview Not on Range Mate yet?