The woodland section of the National Vegetation Classification (NVC) has been widely used by many people and organisations in Great Britain (and, to a limited extent, in Northern Ireland) since it became available in 1986. As a result, there is a great deal of information concerning the occurrence of woodland types in this country. However, the data is distributed between many organisations and private individuals and, until a database was set up to collate it, was largely unavailable to inquirers. The first report on the database (Hall 1996) described the collection of records and the setting up of the spreadsheet. It also discussed the differences in the methodologies of surveys used to build the database, and when to use quadrats. Since this report was published much new information has been gathered, and preliminary maps of NVC communities and sub-communities produced. These are to be published by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee as The woodland NVC atlas for Great Britain in 1998. This interim report outlines some of the patterns that are emerging, and some of the limitations of our survey data.