Rural Land Register Rupert Waite 11 Feb 09 Rural Payments Agency Geographic Information Services 11 Feb 09

Agenda Introductions What is the Rural Land Register Why Set up the Rural Land Register EU Regulations - Key Spatial Concepts in the Regulations Different types of reference parcel Digitisation and back ground maps Using Ordnance Survey – Mastermap The Data Capture phase Where we are now – The RLR Program. Questions

What is the Rural Land Register The Rural Land Register (RLR) is Englands land parcel identification system (LPIS). A database and Geographic Information System (GIS) for registered rural land in England. - A regulation key control for IACS/SPS. The RLR is managed by Rural Payments Agency (RPA) as a corporate Shared Service across the Defra family. (SPS, Environmental Schemes, Forestry Schemes) The RLR holds 2.1million fields. 90% of rural land is mapped on the RLR 1.74 million fields have SPS entitlements activated against them. The data is managed with a web based GIS technology, an integral part of the RPA main integrated IT Application (RITA) for Single Payment Scheme.

Why set up the Rural Land Register? To meet EU regulations, which required the use of GIS techniques in IACS subsidy scheme processing by 1 January 2005 - It was made operational in September 2004 To modernise and streamline our approach to administering land based schemes by making use of GIS technology To support the validation of IACS and Rural Development Program claims and provide information for field inspectors The Rural Land Register is an integral part of Defra overall GI strategy.

European Regulatory Requirements RLR = Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) RLR is the foundation on which SPS is built on, RLR is the key control for SPS, EWGS and ESS.

Key Spatial Concepts in the Regulations

Different types of reference parcel

Digitisation and back ground maps + Orthophotos are used as an aid to the digitisation process where boundaries are unclear. Ordnance Survey MasterMap Digitised Parcels =

Using Ordnance Survey - Mastermap Aerial survey Photogrammetry 440 million records 5,000 daily changes National Geospatial Database generates OS MasterMap Customers Change intelligence from: Ordnance Survey field staff Local authorities Third party commercial sources Field survey Data from external sources

The Data Capture phase 1) January 2002: Phase 1 of the data capture exercise was undertaken by a consortium of external GIS contractors. The digitisation began with Data capture of existing customers (70,000) with registered IACS land (1.70 million land parcels). 2) July 2002: A prototype for the basic storage and maintenance of digitised maps was built in-house 3) August 2004: Continued data capture of White space (Phase 2) started in August 2004 by an external GIS contractor. All remaining land parcels in England that were not previously captured were captured during this phase; they include dairy farmers, small beef and sheep farmers, new entrants, existing IACS customers that had a new holding number. 4) Sept 2004: The full final RITA (RPA IT Application) RLR system containing signed off data became available. 5) October 2005: External GIS contractors appointed to maintain the RLR (offline) and help clear the back log of field change requests and mapping tasks raised as a result of SPS launch. 6) April 2006: The RLR data and its maintenance were brought back in-house in, all mapping/GIS work centralised. An external GIS contractor was appointed to work in-house on RPA systems.

Where are we now - Background to RLR Programme Data Quality Review in light of recent audit reports and EC visits GI Toolkit software platform is out of support (ESRI) and is in need of upgrading Farmer use Google Earth – free service Operating as a centralised specialist team (GI Services) RLR remains a shared service used by FC NE and SPS managed by Service Level Agreements (SLAs) Geographic Intelligence is improving – better satellites RPA moving from an SPS recovery position to a strategic driven approach. Further Research and Development required. Remote Sensing Interoperability eChannel - electronic service delivery

Business Drivers for Change Primary Burning Platforms - technology improvement LPIS data becomes quickly out of date Software platform unsupported – GI fast moving Customer Self Service EU Disallowance risk (minimisation) Operational efficiency Secondary UK lagging behind other member states Pressure/recommendations from EC and JRC Support for wider Defra community - pillar 2 subsidy schemes Move to proactive data management - INSPIRE regulations

RLR Programme Development Objectives Data Refresh Project– ineligible feature removal Customer Land Links Project– better in intelligence on customer/land relationship. System Upgrade Project Exchange of digital data with National cadastral agency (Ordnance Survey®). Ability to take digital ortho photography and ortho corrected satellite images and use with digital GIS for control purposes. Implement regular OS MasterMap Updates Future – Next steps Farmer access to field geometry & area attributes via the internet and use a simple on-line mark up facility for capturing changes Download of field data for use in farm software packages.

Questions