[Talk-GB] Scottish community councils

[Colin Smale]

Scottish Communities are equivalent to Civil Parishes in England, but
with much fewer powers. The whole of Scotland has been divided into
Communities - there are no "unparished areas" like there are in England.
However, relatively few Communities actually have a Council. In terms of
administrative hierarchy, they come under a Scottish Council, which is
effectively a Unitary Authority. 

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_council#Scotland for more
info. 

Concerning the boundaries of Scottish Communities, these are not
included in OS Boundary-Line as such. The data does include "unnamed
polygons" which may correspond to Communities, but I have not found any
documented link. 

Regarding their inclusion in OSM, why not use admin_level=10, in line
with the rest of the UK? 

I agree with Jerry that we need to have a rethink around
admin_level=5/6/8. The regions (admin_level=5) no longer exist as an
administrative entity, so perhaps we should scrap the regions as
boundary=administrative (possibly change to boundary=statistical?) and
use admin_level=5 for the new Combined Authorities. And the Metropolitan
Districts in Merseyside, Greater Manchester etc are sometimes
admin_level=6 (they are effectively, but not legally, Unitary
Authorities) and sometimes admin_level=8 (as subareas of Metropolitan
Counties, which no longer exist as administrative entities). 

Colin

On 2018-05-26 15:32, SK53 wrote:

> Adding such things tends to be down to local mappers. The best source for accurate boundaries is OS Open Data Boundary Line: this needs a little experience to process well, but IIRC JOSM handles it reasonably well. 
> 
> I don't think area committees, at least in Argyll & Bute, have anything like the same powers and responsibilities as English District Councils (the main admin_level=8 grouping), and technically are committees of the full council just like finance, planning etc., rather than being separate legal entities. (Such powers as are delegated are mentioned alongside the basic delegations to officers needed for effective administration, see A&B's constitution [2]. A good concrete example is that English District Councils have Returning Officers, whereas the A&B Returning Officer is the Head of Customer Services.) Nor am I sure if the area committees have any dedicated staff, although I find it hard to see how they can achieve anything without a minimum of secretarial support. 
> 
> I would therefore suggest these are not formal administrative boundaries (in OSM terms), and certainly the admin_level=8 should be avoided. We don't do well in keeping non-formal admin boundaries separate from other types of boundaries (e.g., wards which are essentially a political boundary determined by the boundary commission, even if ward councillors may get limited budgets and councils may align service provision with the wards). 
> 
> As an interim approach I'd suggest using admin_level=9, but I think we could do with a bit more of a re-think of some of our boundary tagging (the bodies with powers 'devolved' upwards, such as the West Midlands Combined Authority (currently tagged admin_level=6, but an anomaly), is another case. 
> 
> Jerry 
> 
> On 26 May 2018 at 13:48, S M <llamaseat at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi, this is my first post on this forum. 
>> 
>> My question is: is there any reason why community councils in Scotland are not mapped? I ask because I do a lot of mapping in Angus, and I was planning to map the community councils for Angus council area, but I wanted to check first. These community councils do not have as many powers as English civil parishes and Welsh communities, but they do have a few statutory powers. 
>> 
>> If they have just not been done yet, I will get started doing Angus council area's community councils, and I can do Edinburgh's as well. They would be admin_level=10 to fit with English civil parishes and Welsh communities. It is worth noting that Scotland also has "area committees" which some council areas (such as Glasgow, Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute etc) have devolved certain powers to. If these were to be mapped they would be admin_level=8 presumably. 
>> 
>> Thanks. 
>> Saoirse 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Talk-GB mailing list
>> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb [1]
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
 

Links:
------
[1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
[2]
https://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/sites/default/files/council-and-government/constitution-part-c_0.pdf
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/attachments/20180526/4d007e59/attachment-0001.html>