1. Please can you supply me with the settlement boundaries (sometimes also termed development boundaries) that are shown on the adopted polices map the Development Plan in a format that can be opened in Graphic Information Systems (GIS) software. Suitable files types include either .shp .tab or .kml. The information will be held by the Planning Policy team the Council’s own GIS team, if it has one.

Wokingham Borough Council will not be releasing the requested GIS shapefile on the following grounds:
1) Section 21(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 whereby the information is reasonably accessible to the applicant.

The Council has made its GIS mapping data publicly available online at www.wokingham.gov.uk. The Council is not therefore obliged to provide the information requested, as it is already publicly available online for the applicant to access themselves.

2) Section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 sets out that FOI requests shall be refused where they could prejudice commercial interests of an organisation.
The Ordnance Survey (OS) licensing agreement shared with public service bodies, including Wokingham Borough Council, makes it clear that FOI requests for OS data in digital format (including data that is derived from OS data) shall be refused, given that vector data can be commercially exploited and hence undermine the revenues of OS and its licensed partners.