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2025-09-17-0917
GeoJSON files containing the public rights of way of Worcestershire
On this web page, Robert Whittaker made an FOI request for the public rights of way data of the council of Worcestershire. In its reply, the Council says "the working copy of the Public Rights of Way Definitive Map is freely available on our INSPIRE web service http://gis.worcestershire.gov.uk/arcgis/services/INSPIRE_WMS/MapServer/WFSServer". The "capabilities file" for the WFSServer is on this web page. That file indicates that the WFSServer provides the data in many formats. For example, it can be obtained as a ESRI shape file. In Aug 2024, Feb 2024, Apr 2025 and Apr 2026, I found that it took about 4 minutes before it returned the ESRI shape file. And in Apr 2026, I found that after waiting this time it said "Bad Request". I tried downloading as a KMZ file. It was fast but the lat-lons were bad. So in the end I downloaded the data as a GML2 file using this URL.
The Council also provides information about public rights of way on its online map. It may be that their map uses more up-to-date information.
An authority's Definitive Map is the authoritative source of their rights of way. The details of the public rights of way network contained in an authority's data are for information only, and are an interpretation of the Definitive Map, not the Definitive Map itself, and should not be relied on for determining the position or alignment of any public right of way. For legal purposes, an authority's data does not replace their Definitive Map. And changes may have been made to the Definitive Map that are not included in their data. The authority's data contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Attempting to view this data with more detail than 1:10000 may produce an inaccurate rendering of the route of a public right of way.
This web page indicates that the data is made available by the council of Worcestershire under the terms of Open Government Licence v3.0. So it's possible for you to use this data provided you give the attribution that the data has been provided by the council of Worcestershire.
Elsewhere on this web site, there is a web page about how this web site provides the public rights of way of Worcestershire in KML format. The KML uses data that has the date 1st May 2026. That web page explains how I've augmented the basic KML with additional information.
I've converted this augmented KML into GeoJSON.
Besides giving the longitudes and latitudes of the route of a public right of way,
each entry in the GeoJSON also has a name and a description.
The name will be something like:
WO|PEBWORTH|528(C)
There are three parts to the name:
"WO" (meaning "Worcestershire"),
the id of the
parish/community/area
and the id of the path within the
parish/community/area.
The description will be something like:
Fo|WO:11240|0.275|PB-528|-1.79222|52.12731|-1.79654|52.12437|414320,247687|414025,247359
This gives other information about the public right of way.
First, there is a two letter code giving its type
which is one of
Fo (meaning Footpath),
Br (meaning Bridleway),
Re (meaning Restricted byway)
and
BO (meaning Byway open to all traffic).
Following this code, there are
a unique name,
the length in miles, any additional information obtained from the data supplied by the authority (or none),
the longitude of its first point,
the latitude of its first point,
the longitude of its last point,
the latitude of its last point,
the eastings and northings of its first point
and
the eastings and northings of its last point.
The following GeoJSON files are available:
GeoJSON file for footpaths in Worcestershire;
GeoJSON file for bridleways in Worcestershire;
GeoJSON file for restricted byways in Worcestershire;
GeoJSON file for byways open to all traffic in Worcestershire.
Because some of these GeoJSON files are large,
the GeoJSON is also available in a large number of smaller files.
Each smaller file has information about public rights of way that are in a
square that is 0.1 degrees longitude wide
and 0.1 degrees latitude high.
For example, the file 17W521Fo.json
contains details about the Footpaths that are partly/wholly in the
square that is west and north of -1.7 degrees longitude
and 52.1 degrees latitude.
Here is a link to a
zip file containing all the smaller GeoJSON files for Worcestershire.
The latitude values for Worcestershire range from 51.96 to 52.44. And the longitude values range from -2.65 to -1.78.