Parish Online, in collaboration with Improvement Service, has launched a Scottish variant of its successful digital mapping software. The Community Map Scotland project is focused on helping Scottish Community Councils create their Local Place Plans. The software is initially provided free for a whole year for any Community Council group.

Local Place Plans are a way for Community Council groups to have their say on how their town or village is shaped in the future. These plans include all aspects of life from transport, housing, environmental protection, energy generation, society and culture. Those at community level have the best local knowledge of their area so are best placed to advise on future improvements. Once Local Place Plans are approved, they can become part of the higher-tier Local Development Plans, so are a great way for having local voices heard.

Parish Online’s cloud-based digital mapping software has been used by over 2,000 Town, Parish and Community Councils in England and Wales for over the last 12 years and has become a critical resource for managing assets, conducting neighbourhood plans, and more recently resilience and climate plans. It includes continuously updated mapping datasets such as Ordnance Survey’s MasterMap and AddressBase, through the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) to give councils the most up-to-date view of their area. It also includes tools such as printing, measuring, annotation and even calculation of walking and cycling distances for promoting low-traffic neighbourhoods.

Chris Mewse, Managing Director of Parish Online commented,

“It’s great to be able to launch the Community Map Scotland project. It’s something we’ve been keen to do for a long time, and we’re excited to start helping Community Councils create their Local Place Plans using our free mapping software. Community Councils are best-placed to decide what should happen in their local area as they have the local knowledge. They know what floods, they know where traffic forms, and they know the social and economic issues that local residents are facing. Harnessing that local knowledge into a forward-plan across the hundreds of councils across Scotland is going to be great to see.”

The Parish Online software has been adapted to use key map data from Improvement Service, an organisation focused on collecting and sharing mapping information from Local Authorities. This provides the foundation for Community Councils to have their say on how their village should be developed, whilst taking into account factors such as planning applications, school catchments and heritage. Simon Roberts, Data & Engagement Manager at Improvement Service commented,

“The Spatial Hub is an online data sharing platform that’s been providing better access to local government and other datasets since 2016, so it’s fantastic to extend that to Community Councils in an easy-to-use mapping platform for Local Place Plans and better citizen engagement. It will guide the councils in their decision making, and allow them to better communicate the places of interest in their neighbourhood”.

Community Councils can sign up to be part of the Community Map Scotland project completely free by going to www.parish-online.co.uk/scotland and using the code cms12 when they sign up. This will give them 12 months of free access to the software.