GI Mapping Project

Tender description

Background Natural England works with Local Planning Authorities, developers and other partners to help put in place legal agreements to secure areas of Green Infrastructure (GI). Natural England is looking to appoint a contractor to gather the maps from local authorities and then carry out the mapping of areas identified as Green Infrastructure secured through Natural England’s partnership working and development management advice. This is not the mapping of GI opportunity or strategy maps but rather mapping of the GI secured through planning agreements or the equivalent legal agreement of a funding arrangement. This will involve translating maps in various electronic formats (e.g. PDF or jpeg) into GIS format as well as checking these areas against Ordnance Survey MasterMap. Research aims and objectives Natural England enables and facilitates partner organisations to secure Green Infrastructure (including priority habitat) delivery through Development Management through the planning system. It is a requirement for Natural England to report on the area and location of the GI is secured through Natural England’s work. To enable this we need to map the areas secured in the form of a GIS layer. The data presently consists of a grid reference and a spreadsheet containing further information for each area of GI. The project aims to: • gather maps relating to the development management identified in the spreadsheet from the local authorities (often available from their websites) • transfer maps into GIS format following national data standards and requirements; and • identify where there are gaps in the map data.