[Talk-GB] Metropolitan Districts at admin_level=8

[SK53]

Hi Colin,

I was hoping you might answer.

In terms of OSM I think hypothetically dormant county councils cannot meet
the on-the-ground and repeatably observable characteristics,our  which
underlying mapping. As a council tax payer in one of the Berkshire
successor authorities this status of Berkshire was not something I was
aware of (mind you I would take "dissolved" in the relevant statutory order
<https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1996/1879/article/3/made> to mean
"definitely deceased).

The general usage (particularly noticeable on maps of covid prevalence) is
to treat primary authorities in a similar way, and I think we ought to do
this on OSM (so unitaries, london boroughs & metropolitan districts all at
level=6), particularly as designation does the job of showing the
particular legal form of a council. Combined authorities seem to be a law
on their own, with each one having different responsibilities & powers, but
I do agree that level=5 would be more appropriate. I do find the existing
regions tagged at this level particularly useful for analysing OSM data via
overpass, so although they no longer exist (other than perhaps in NUTS) I
would like to see them retained in some form.

Regards,

Jerry

On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 at 15:09, Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Although they are unitaries in function (so the same as Cornwall,
> Wiltshire etc) they are legally Metropolitan Districts. The Metropolitan
> Counties to which they belong still exist - only the councils have been
> abolished. The county council could, in theory, be brought back without
> needing an act of parliament to create a new county. This applies to
> Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West
> Midlands, and West Yorkshire. The tagging should at least be consistent
> across these six, but when I last looked it wasn't (some level 6, some
> level 8).
>
> Berkshire is in the same position, except that it is a Non-Metropolitan
> County. The county still exists in a legal sense, but it has no council.
>
> The Combined Authorities should IMHO be admin_level=5, because their
> constituents are typically admin_level=6. Previously level 5 was used for
> the Regions, but they no longer have an administrative function (did they
> ever?) so I consider level 5 to be available for the Combined Authorities.
> The CA's also have two classes of member, constituent members and associate
> members, and can cross county boundaries; they don't fit into the strict
> hierarchy we see elsewhere.
>
> Colin
>
> On 03/04/2021 3:34 PM SK53 <sk53.osm at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I've just noticed that most (all?) metropolitan district councils (e.g.,
> Wirral, Rotherham) are at admin_level=8 despite having functions equivalent
> to other primary local authorities which are mapped with admin_level=6.
>
> I know that the new West Midlands Combined Authority also has
> admin_level=6, but I always thought that was an unhappy compromise
> resulting in admin_level=6 having no clear meaning.
>
> I note that until 4 years or so these were admin_level=6 (which is what I
> expected) until changesets like these:
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/49040249#map=8/53.037/-2.318. I
> can't recall if these were discussed, but certainly the values dont match
> my naive expectations.
>
> Jerry
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