§ Ms Roseanna CunninghamTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions how many people are employed by Ordnance Survey in Scotland, broken down by job category; what facilities for map making the Ordnance Survey maintains in Scotland; and if he will provide a breakdown of Ordnance Survey spending in Scotland as a ratio of overall spending in each year since 1990. [28551]
§ Mr. Raynsford[holding answer 11 February 1998]: Ordnance Survey in Great Britain currently employs 66 people in Scotland, 63 of whom are based in the seven Scottish field offices which are located in Inverness, Aberdeen, Glenrothes, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hamilton and Ayr. These people are directly involved in the surveying and capturing of mapping data to update the National Topographic Database (NTD) and other related products (eg ADDRESS-POINTtm). In addition, Ordnance Survey Scottish Region is responsible for the re-mapping of parts of Cumbria. The data collected are sent to Ordnance Survey's headquarters in Southampton where they are incorporated into the NTD and related databases; no actual map making is carried out in the field offices.
The table provides a breakdown of the types of jobs Ordnance Survey staff based in Scotland are engaged in:
Job title Number of staff Region Manager 1 Chief Surveyor 5 Surveyors 49 Administrators 5 Survey Assistants 3 Field Sales Executive for Scotland 1 Regional Account Manager for Scotland 1 Assistant Regional Account Manager for Scotland 1 Total 66 In addition to the people included in the table, many of 1,300 Ordnance Survey staff based at its headquarters are also engaged in activities related to the capture of mapping data (eg from aerial photographs, the taking of which is co-ordinated from Southampton and undertaken from an aeroplane which flies from Blackpool), and the production of maps and related products, of both Scotland and the rest of Great Britain.
Ordnance Survey updates its maps primarily in relation to the local rate of change in the landscape. Thus more work is done locally where new roads, housing estates, etc are created than in mountain and moorland areas. No specific breakdown of effort has been made in the past between England, Scotland and Wales but systems will be put in place to provide such statistics to the Scottish Parliament (the hon. Lady may already be aware that the subject matter of the Ordnance Survey Act 1841 is reserved in the Scotland Bill published last December). The best estimates currently possible are that Ordnance Survey expends approximately 7.5 per cent. of its total out-goings on re-mapping Scotland and that this fairly reflects a combination of continuous revision caused by new developments in Scotland and periodic revisions to cover the whole country.
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