May be of interest. 🙂

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/17/ordnance-survey-maps-online 

Excellent, thanks for the link!

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It all sounds very Utopian but to sound a cynical note, presumably the fees charged by OS go a long way towards funding their activities. Will we simply paying for them through our taxes instead or as seems likely, will mean the OS end up chronically under-funded?

It all sounds very Utopian but to sound a cynical note, presumably the fees charged by OS go a long way towards funding their activities. Will we simply paying for them through our taxes instead or as seems likely, will mean the OS end up chronically under-funded?

We paid for OS originally out of our taxes, back to square one.

I already have UK coverage at 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 on PC so I will only gain updates or 1:12,500 etc.

Surely part of the OS is only part-funded through taxes and part-funded by commercial income?
A change to one strand of income would presumably have an affect on the other and a drop in income would have a detrimental affect upon their output.

I've seen other countries maps and they're barely fit for wrapping birthday presents with. It'd be a shame for ours to go the same way.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/17/ordnance-survey-maps-online 

😉

Until about 20 or so years ago the OS was funded entirely by the taxpayer but then like other government departments it became an agency, able to cut costs and increase prices to depend less on the taxpayer and more on the customer. Present govt. policy is to privatise as much as possible regardless of the sense in doing so; certainly with the OS such change has seen a reduction in standards. Fortunately after 32 years as a cartographic surveyor in the OS I was able to escape before things got any worse.

Whatever may be said by the present govt. there will be an election before too long so be even more sceptical than usual!

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I always thought the transfer from 1 inch to 1:50,000 was a bad move. Not because of the increase in scale, far from it, that was an improvement. At the same time though, they deleted a lot of the information that was previously on the 1 inch. At the time they said that wasn't correct, they reckoned it was the increase in scale that made it look like less was on the map. Load of crap, you only have to look at two maps side by side to see the difference!

This is made even easier now by looking at this website:-

http://wtp2.appspot.com/wheresthepath.htm 

This is nothing new I've been using OS mapping for over 18 months now. I've also put links to it before here on this group, here it is again http://www.kap.toadstone.com/kapmap/osmap.html  Anyone can create or use the Open Space service by registering.

The mapping is dynamic and goes right down to their street level view. I've restricted the field of view only because they allow you a tile amount/day.

In the past year the OS have been recruiting ground data operatives who log and confirm current features. They have also completely mapped from the air the whole of the UK, it started in 2000 I believe. This photographic data is of an extremely high quality/definition and is being used, for example, by local authorities to qualify and confirm infringements of the planning laws/permissions. So anyone thinking they can gradually build and extension or two might do well to think again. I'm sure the OS will gain revenue from this type of data.

As Johnnearcfon has pointed out, the Where's the Path site is an example of the use of Open Space linking the Google API with the OS. Bill Chadwick who developed the application is a very clever chap.

Anyone wanting to use the OS Open Space API can do so here http://openspace.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/openspace/