Land Matters

We (Cathy, daughther Isla and myself) are now back from Ethiopia and on Monday 30 June heading by train and boat via Paris, Berlin and Helsinki to Moscow from where we are cycling back to Edinburgh (we actually start in Tallinn because it is illegal for under 14 yr olds to cycle in Russia). We are aiming to cycle around 1500 -1600km and Isla will be busking with her violin in the towns and cities we pass through (see buskingforstreetchildren website). She is also seeking sponsorship per 100km - please email me if you would like to sponser her. To follow our progress, have a look at our blog.

Greetings,

Due to problems with accessing my blog from Ethiopia I have installed new software - Wordpress - which I shall be using for my Blog. Note that comments in the Who Owns Scotland and the Ordnance Survey story have therefore been copied over by me and as of today (23 Sep 2007) the entry thus claims “no comments added”.

In 2002 I launched a site called whoownsscotland which was designed to document the ownership of land in Scotland. Progress has been slow because it is substantially a voluntary effort though I have had great support form folk in meeting the expenses of running it. The biggest expense has been Ordnance Survey digital mapping. Now, however, my reationship with OS is over due to them terminating my contract unilaterally and trying to bully me into a new, far more expensive contract.

You can read the full story at

www.whoownsscotland.org.uk/os.htm

Please leave any comments you care to make here at this blog entry.
 
11 COMMENTS (these have been carried over from my previous blog site - new comments apear in “comment”) link below
2:59 PM
George Clark said…

Andy
I have read the story and it makes grim reading. Hopoefully the OS crew will change their ways.

George
 
2.59pm
Anonymous said…
I find this incredible! You have taken all steps possible to be correct in your dealings with the OS and then they refute all agreements?
Does this mean that a sport such as Orienteering, where you mark out a course on a reproduced OS map is illegal?

7:25 PM  
Greg said…
It’s genuinely outrageous that OS charges for this stuff at all; never mind their pricing and licensing policies make no sense.

At the end of the day, our government (at all levels) needs OS mapping to do its work; so our taxes pay for this data anyway. Making it free would cost no more, but enables all levels of the economy to generate innovation and wealth. This is the US approach, and part of the reason that their tech industry is able to fluorish so beneficially for their whole economy.

A government owned monopoly trying to maximise its income is a dangerous beast.

9:57 AM  
Nick said…
Seeing as we paid for this data once (as taxpayers) paying for it again is a bit much.

Maybe you could derive your polygons from the recently released KGB maps

5:39 PM  
Anonymous said…
This is not a unique story. OS are managed by a bunch of incompetents, with one hand not knowing what the other is doing, and like the blind monkey incapable of even reading and understanding their own drivel.

They are responsible to the Deputy Prime Minister, who despite correspondence on a similar but unrelated matter totally ignores everything put to him. Even to the extent of sending a dismissive comment back in a plain unstamped envelope with a Post Office demand to pay £1.23!

OS has not the slightest bit of common-sense to enable them to understand how negative and antagonistic they are, without the slightest sign of any real business acumen. Their ivory tower needs to be pulled down.

10:54 PM  
Mike said…
Andy, like the others, I agree that this is not an unusual story. We had to go through hoops recently to get a small excerpt into an academic book we were publishing. All very unsatisfactory. I have worked in academic GIS for over 10 years and the recent surge in open source mapping tools is fantastic. Have you thought about putting your whoownsscotland mapping into a GoogleMap hack?

11:49 AM  
Jack said…
I’m surprised nobody has suggested the obvious: that wealthy, well-connected landowners don’t like having maps of their estates published online; and perhaps one or two of them have found ways to lobby or put pressure on the OS to have them removed legally and discretely.

12:55 AM  
Anonymous said…
Is there somewhere we can lodge our complaints, this is good, but doubt if OS will ever see it…

12:49 PM  
Anonymous said…
They did what they did, and that can’t be changed. 

What I’m more interested in is the WHY. 

Why after telling you, initially, that all was OK, did they seemingly go out of their way to make things difficult for you?

8:30 PM  
Anonymous said…
It is to be hoped that the EU’s INSPIRE Directive (2007/2/EC)which seeks to make “spatial information” gathered by governmental bodies more open will help to stop this sort of nonsense as practiced by the Ordnance Survey.

Keith T.

4:18 PM  
muymalestado said…
So; OS adds value to the land of Great Britain by mapping and we are charged for it. On the face of it that sounds about right. Now; the Crown also charges for using the sea bed. Did they add value there? Will they soon charge for walking on the surface of Britain? Most of us breathe. Will we be charged?

1.21 AM 21 September 2007
Jackie Quinn said….
Sadly this is so typical of they way life is ..it is always all about money or someone wishing to flex their little power muscles.. It is a pity.

I feel for you going through all that stress for nothing.

Recent work on common good land is reported here.

This is a major new area of work and one that is very rewarding as people begin to rediscover assets that belong to them that have been forgotten about. Our report, published on 29 November 2005, is available as a downloadable pdf here.

Updates on progress with the Common Good Campaign will be published here and I will post links on my blog when important new developments take place.

Meanwhile the Community Right to Buy legislation continues to get bogged down in administrative and bureaucratic procedures. Latest news can be found here.

POSTED BY ANDY WIGHTMAN AT 9:08 PM  

Things are happening south of the border. Following the election, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Home Office have set up a Working Group to develop proposals for a community right to buy in England and Wales. This looks like being far more radical that the Scottish model as it will apply to urban areas where most people live and where wealth can most easily be generated. Taking inspiration from the successes of community businesses and Development Trusts, David Miliband MP, Minister of Communities and Local Government, made a ground breaking speech to the British Urban Regeneration Asociation on 12 October 2005. In it he said,

“Some of the best regeneration in this country is through social entrepreneurs within communities spotting untapped opportunities and generating value out of assets which were previously under-utilised. That means more than tokenistic community representation, but also avoiding the trap of a community sector as dependent on state funding as the long term IB claimant. In other words we need to support social enterprise and not just social service.

The proponents of Community Right to Buy argue that it would represent as big a transfer of wealth and power to communities as housing Right to Buy represented for individuals. We are not talking about an alternative to major development. We are talking about the potential of the voluntary and community sector to take disused or under-used land and buildings - youth or community centres, unoccupied housing, and undeveloped land - and turn it into a vibrant resource for the community, raising not just morale but the value of other properties. We are determined to look at this issue as we develop our vision for sustainable communities.”

Good news in the Labour Election Manifesto published today - the first signs of a land reform agenda for England and Wales!

In Chapter 9 pages 103 - 105 of the Manifesto the Labour Party write the following: -

Building from the neighbourhood up

People want a sense of control over their own neighbourhood. Not a new tier of neighbourhood government, but new powers over the problems that confront them when they step outside their front door issues like litter, graffiti and anti-social behaviour.That is why we will offer neighbourhoods a range of powers from which they can choose,
including:

Good parish councils engage communities and make a real difference, so we will extend the right to establish parish councils to communities in London.

OK - it’s not land reform and the Manifesto fails to commit to a Community right to Buy Act for the whole of the UK - something that the Social Enterprise Coalition has been campaigning for but at least the minimal committment opens up the debate in England and Wales which is welcome.

Congratulations to all those organisations who have been lobbying for such a committment - particularly the Social Enterprise Coalition and the Development Trusts Association. I await sight of the Lib Dem Manifesto.

PS - the Conservative manifesto is silent on the topic.