Spatial News Press Release :

Benefits include accuracy and flexibility Mapping mission offers close-up on England. From the Channel coast to the Cheviots, and from the Wash to the Wirral, England is now all mapped out in an award-winning, innovative map series. Ordnance Survey, Britain's national mapping agency, has completed coverage of England on a mission to map the entire country in Landplan, a highly-detailed series aimed at business and professional users.

The success comes just three months after Wales was completed, and keeps the agency on track to finish all of Britain by spring 2001. The news is revealed on the eve of the prestigious Property Computer Show at the Barbican, London (October 17 and 18), where a presentation on Landplan will take place.

Landplan, available in 1:5,000 and 1:10,000 scale plots, is the first map to be digitally created from a range of Ordnance Survey databases. Dedicated computer software was designed to automatically process, simplify and merge the data together, with expert cartographers putting the finishing touches to the new mapping.

More than 5,600 sheets of Landplan covering England are now held on a master computer database, with site-centred plots printed to order to match each customer's precise requirements.

"It's been created in an innovative way," says John Richardson, Landplan Senior Product Manager for Ordnance Survey. "Revisions to our traditional 1:10,000 scale maps were labour-intensive, costly and time-consuming. The computerised data underpinning Landplan is much easier and faster to update. I'm delighted that we've now completed England as well as Wales, and we're on schedule to have Scotland finished in a matter of months."

Landplan has been awarded the title of Millennium Product by the Design Council because of the high quality of its design and the technology used to create it.

Architects, civil engineers, surveyors, local and central government, and building firms all enjoy a host of Landplan benefits such as colour, accuracy and flexibility. It can be used, for example, to identify characteristic land features, for property management, design work, planning applications, as a visual aid to conveyancing, identifying school catchment areas, and market research.

Landplan is part of the Superplan family of large-scale Ordnance Survey digital products. The site-centred plots are available through a same-day service from a network of Ordnance Survey Superplan Agents around Britain. They offer a wide choice of scales, map sizes, media and plot outputs. Details can be found on the Ordnance Survey web site at

www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk.

Landplan's raster data for England, the back-drop mapping for use on PCs and work stations, is expected to be available directly from Ordnance Survey later in the autumn.

Senior Press Officer - Philip Round
E-mail: pround@ordsvy.gov.uk
Phone: (+44) 023 8079 2635

Press Officer - Paula Good
E-mail: pgood@ordsvy.gov.uk
Phone: (+44) 023 8079 2568

Press Office Assistant - Anne Patrick
E-mail: apatrick@ordsvy.gov.uk
Phone: (+44) 023 8079 2251
Press Office fax: (+44) 023 8079 2031