please empty your brain below

Interesting, very interesting. Anyone know why inner London was excluded? Good to know that if the footpath in the way of the next development isn't on the map, it doesn't count...
Very interesting. Thanks DG. Damn though, I'm going to be spending hours looking at maps now.
Ooh! Pretty sure the Croydon definitive map scans are new; I've tried searching for this stuff before and all I could find was a very complex and unclear online GIS map/database. Thanks for digging this up!
Also, i think OSM folk have been trying to persuade councils to release this stuff as open data -- Surrey has done, I think, but Croydon hasn't, as it makes very very clear on the webpage DG linked to... ;-)
This caused grief in Greenwich a few years ago when a private developer plonked a wall on a cycle lane in Blackheath. The council huffed and puffed, but nothing was done.

http://westcombe.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/blocked-rights-of-way-bellfield-close.html
What is also "not good" is the pollution one is subject to walking around London. When "alerts" are issued all we are told is for some of us to avoid "over-doing-it" or going outside etc. Yet no restrications are ever placed on the causes of the pollution...what does that tell us?!
I think the requirement to create a Definitive Map goes back a long way before 2000. I believe they had to be created in the 1940s?

This (Definitive Map) is what the Ordnance Survey use to put the footpaths on the maps and in the correct place, the defintive maps from local Councils.

The system is different in Inner London as you say and is also different in Scotland. In Scotland it is quite like Inner London, in that footpaths exist and must be maintained by the Council, but they are not required to maintain a definitive map to show the routes of them. For this reason, footpaths in Scotland are not normally shown on Ordnance Survey maps either (only long distance routes tend to be). However there is a default right to roam more or less everywhere in Scotland, so it is less of an issue (but showing footpaths would be useful because they would have stiles crossing fences, as it is if you walk a lot in Scotland you often end up having to climb over fences).

I do find this odd because I would have thought in order to maintain footpaths, Councils need to know where they are and so likely have them plotted on a map somewhere - but presumably are not required to make that available.

As an aside I wonder if an FOI request to some of the Councils that have not published the map to ask for a copy of the Definitive Map would work?
Jon Combe is right: I knew someone who worked on Definitive maps for Warwickshire in the 1990s.
Nothing to be found on Newham? I can add one snippet: Stratford Centre (the old shopping centre, not Westfield) is unlocked all night because it stands on a right of way.
I wonder ... just because a right of way is not shown on a map (as in central London) does that make them any less of a right of way
Caz: in theory no, but in practice it would be difficult to assert your right to be on it if the person trying to stop you just says "No it's not a right of way". Rights can only be exercised if they are known-about.
"not yet part of a private property-run outdoor dystopia" ...but in some parts of London we seem to be (blindly) heading in that direction.
I see that the Tories are just about to privatise the flipping Land Registry for goodness sake.

Records of land ownership and "transparency" are just about to become difficult and expensive unless we protest and stop it.

Demo in central London tomorrow against.. Well everything really. Please be there xxx
I wonder if there is a way of taking all the info from these and just making some sort of central pan London online map or app? Would make it easy for people to find nearest places to walk and could be combined with nearest tube / bus data to find quickest way there.
The situation in Scotland has changed recently. Right to roam still exists (with some restrictions), but councils are now required to develop and publish networks of "core paths" and to maintain these paths. They are not yet on the OS maps, but Fife council has produced an A3 booklet with details of all the core paths in the county.

The reality is less good. A developer blocked a core path in Leuchars (the old railway line to Tayport). We contacted the council and were told not to expect a reply or any action for six months.
I think that the requirement for definitive maps was created by the Rights of Way Act 1932: rights of way information derived explicitly from definitive maps started to appear on Ordnance Survey one-inch maps in the late 1960s/early 1970s.










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