AQW 21423/22-27

Ms Kate Nicholl
Alliance Party
South Belfast

Tabled Date: 28/01/2025
Answered On Date: 10/02/2025
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Finance whether her Department will (i) make all Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland (OSNI) admin boundary maps publicly and freely available as raster images, including (a) post-1973 maps held by OSNI; and (b) 1921-1973 maps held by PRONI; and (ii) publish these boundaries in GeoJSON/Shapefile format.

Answer:

(i) a. The post-1973 administrative boundaries referred to (ie, Local Government District boundaries, Wards Boundaries and Parliamentary Constituencies boundaries) and held by OSNI, are already available under Open Government License (OGL) via the Open Data NI portal, Spatial NI and/or through direct contact with OSNI.

b. The 1921-1973 maps held by PRONI are not within OSNI’s remit.

(ii) The digitised administrative boundary datasets OSNI hold are already available in shapefile format from 1993 onwards under OGL. All other administrative boundary datasets within OSNI’s remit are only available as scanned images of historic paper maps (and also available under OGL) and therefore can only be disseminated using the appropriate raster formats (ie, not shapefile).