Bath and North East Somerset Council

Working with town and parish councils in our area has shown the need for them to collaborate and collect data in a consistent format which can be aggregated into an authority wide data sets, for example on trees, parish assets and flood risks. We would like to trial methodology and standards and roll them out across the 51 parishes within our authority, and collaborate with one or more neighbouring authorities to demonstrate that it has wider application, potentially up to national level.

Creating common layers into national data sets will benefit all levels of local government, as well as other public bodies and wider users of digital data.

Discovery evidence

For several years we have worked with our 51 town and parish councils to encourage the use of digital data, especially geographic data. We have given them access to GIS to record data, but the lack of common data standards has meant that neither they nor us are using the resource to its full potential. We also know that this is true in our neighbouring authorities.